New Haven Museum
Dixwell in Sarah Boone’s day; no authenticated photo of her is known to exist.
During Black History Month, when children learn about George Carver’s cultivation of the peanut and Lewis Latimer’s light bulb filament, New Haven children have an opportunity to be proud of a notable black inventor from their city. Unfortunately, most children (and their parents) never heard of her.
In the 1890s, a black woman inventor living in New Haven got a patent for her invention of an early ironing board. Her name was Sarah Boone.
Sarah Boone (1832 – 1904) was a dressmaker who was born in North Carolina, and settled with her family in the ‘Elm City’ before the Civil War. The Boones migrated from the South using a network closely linked to the Underground Railroad, moving to the black section of town along Dixwell Avenue.
While Chapel Street was the ‘Main Street’ for New Haven at large, Dixwell was the ‘Main Street’ for the black community. Sarah Boone and her family lived at 30 Winter St., and there she set up her dress shop along with her daughters.
In the 19th century, many people hired dressmakers to make their clothes. There were plenty of them in New Haven, each trying to outsell each other.
One way to make clothes look great to customers was to iron them nicely. In Boone’s time, ironing was different — one would iron clothes by placing a wood plank on the back of two chairs. Pressing clothes this way was fine for a wide pair of pants or a skirt.
But clothes in Sarah Boone’s day were fitted. When Sarah Boone was alive, New Haven was the center of the corset industry, where dresses had tiny waistlines and tight sleeves. Ironing this style of clothing with those wide wood boards was a challenge. So Sarah Boone came up with a solution.
Wikipedia
Boone’s invention was to create a new type of ironing board that could fit inside a narrow sleeve or waist. She also made her new ironing board collapsible and added padding on top.
For her clever idea, she was awarded U.S. Patent #473,653 on April 26, 1892. Sarah Boone was 60 years old.
Sarah Boone was one of the first black women in the country to get a patent, and certainly one of the few women in the country to do so.
What made her achievement so significant is that just two decades earlier, she could not read. When she grew up, slave laws in the south made it illegal to teach blacks how to read. But she took lessons as an adult. She was a member of the Dixwell Congregational Church, which had a tradition of adult education, so she probably learned there.
Not only did she learn to read; she read technical documents and diagrams, so that she could write a patent that proved that her engineering idea was clever, unique, workable and simple.
Getting a patent was no small feat. Before the Civil War, many blacks could not claim an invention.
After Sarah Boone got her patent, there is very little documentation that she commercialized her invention. Nevertheless, her story is extraordinary, for she left her mark with the legal record in a time when women could not vote.
Sarah Boone died at home in 1904 of Bright’s disease and was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery. She left no papers, or letters, or pictures. (The Wikipedia picture is probably not her.)
However, she left a patent and proof of black ingenuity and innovation. For that, New Haven children have a reason to celebrate her this Black History Month.
Ainissa Ramirez is a writer researching Sarah Boone. If anyone knows Boone’s ancestors or has additional details, please get in touch with her at www.ainissaramirez.com.