Picture of sarah boone ironing board

Sarah boone interesting facts
When was sarah boone born and died
When did sarah boone die

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Sarah Boone (1832-1904) | Video

Sarah Boone, a dressmaker, made a change to the ironing board to make it easier to iron sleeves and the bodies of women’s clothes without adding creases. In 1892, her invention was approved making her one of the first African American women to be awarded a patent.

Please NOTE: After further research, we made a correction to Sarah Boone’s image for the video. The previous video is no longer published.

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Sarah Boone was an American inventor best known for her patented improvements to the ironing board. She was one of the first African American women to receive a patent in United States history.

Boone’s legacy was her improved ironing board. The ironing board had first been patented in 1858 and circulated into common usage in the times that followed. Boone’s improvement was patented on April 26, 1892, as U.S. Patent 473,653.

The patent described the new invention as “particularly adapted to be used in ironing the sleeves and bodies of ladies’ garments.” It accomplished this by taking the previously rigid design of the board and curving the edges slightly, to account for the seams inlaid in most women’s clothing at the time. It was sized to that of the typical sleeve of contemporary clothes. The text of the patent hints at a possible variation that would be better suited for men’s clothing. The board also used a support system to flip the garment to its other side, enabling the user to iron both sides of a sleeve. This meant that the ironing of one side would not be undone by the

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NBIM Celebrates Black Innovators: The Black Dressmaker who Transformed Ironing

Sarah (Marshall) Boone was born enslaved in New Bern, North Carolina in 1832. She married very young (only 14 or 15) and moved to New Haven after her freedom was purchased, ostensibly by her new husband, a freedman. They had eight children and had relocated to Connecticut by 1856, six years before the start of the Civil War. (Sarah Boone Invents A Better Ironing Board, Ainissa Ramirez, CTExplored, 2020)

In 1892, Sarah, now working as a dressmaker, invented and patented an early version of the modern ironing board with collapsible legs. Prior to her invention, women had been pressing and ironing on tables or a plank rested across two chairs. (Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators, William Morrow, 1993)

“Sarah Boone was one of many dressmakers in New Haven, and the listing of her name in the city directory after 1861 and her proximity to Yale’s campus suggests that she made dresses for both Black and white clients, a common practice according to Rollins Osterweis’s Thre