Sarah Boone
Sarah Boone, the daughter of enslaved parents. Sarah was freed under unknown circumstances, while many think she earned her freedom at the age of 15 when she married James Boone, a free African American in 1847. Records show she was free before her marriage. The couple went on to have eight children.
Just the same, she utilizing the Underground Railroad to migrated with her husband, children, and widowed mother to New Haven, Connecticut, prior to the Civil War.
In New Haven, she took up dressmaking as a profession, and her husband as a bricklayer, until his death in the mid-1870s. According to records, Boone was successful enough to own her own house.
PICTURED IS THE DRAWING OF BOONE’S PATENT. FOR BOONE’S FULL PATENT, CLICK LINK RIGHT OF THIS PICTURE
Hailing from an area where it was illegal to teach African Americans to read and write, Boone finally took steps to overcome that disadvantage in her late 40s, possibly through her membership at the Dixwell Congregational Church.
In the course of her work, she noticed the difficulty of flattening out creases in the sleeves and bodies of women's dresses. Ironing at the time was done on a wooden plank propped between chairs or on the kitchen table.
Sarah developed a design of a tapered board on a stand. By rotating the fabric around the board, it completely smoothed any portion of a dress. As a result, her design was issued US Patent # 473,653 on 26 April 1892.
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c9/5c/3d/4c6c6f691ed1a5/US473653.pdf
Mrs. Boone was one of the first Black American women to be issued a patent and her design for the ironing board is still used today.
ELIJAH McCOY
Eighteen years earlier, the portable ironing board was patented in 1874, by African Canadian American engineer and inventor Elijah McCoy.
McCoy was an inventor holding many patents for the automatic lubrication of machinery. While resident in Ypsilanti, Michigan, after two years of development, he received his first U.S. patent on 12 May 1874.
Nevertheless, it is Sarah Boone’s ironing board design that we all know today.
Who Invented the Ironing Board?
The earliest known ironing boards were invented by the Vikings in the 9th century. They were made from flat pieces of whalebone, on which they would press their clothes using heated rocks.
Later, first in Europe then America, people used the kitchen table, or on a flat piece of wooden board resting between two chairs to iron their clothes on.
In 1858, W. Vandenburg patented what he called the ironing table.
In 1861 Isaac Ronnie Bord took out a patent for an adjustable flat horizontal surface for the pressing of undergarments, garments and bed linen.
McCOY’S PATENT
In 1866, Miss S. A. Mort obtained a patent for the first truly folding ironing board. The invention also included a removable pressboard used for sleeves.
Then, the portable ironing board by Elijah McCoy in 1874.
In 1892, Sarah Boone patented the ironing board we know today.
Sarah Marshall Boone died in 1904 at 72 years old. She is buried in a family plot in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. Due to the nature of slavery, many enslaved peoples were not accounted for. Very little historically verified documentation remains about Sarah Boone, her life, quotes, and family.
On the simple gravestone in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven there is record of her mother, Sarah Marshall, her husband James, Sarah herself and one daughter Henrietta Boone 1860 – 1934.