Sarah Boone
LaNiyah Grovell ’27
Sarah Boone was born to enslaved parents in 1832. In 1847 she married a free African American, James Boone, and left North Carolina before the outbreak of the Civil War using the network known as the Underground Railroad. They settled in New Haven, Connecticut with her widowed mother and their children. Sarah worked as a dressmaker and along with her husband’s income as a bricklayer, they bought a house. With his early death in the 1870s, Sarah had to suddenly support herself and eight children alone. At the age of 40, she learned to read and write (it was illegal to teach enslaved people at the time she was born). Using her newly acquired literacy skills, Sarah applied for a patent. She wrote that the purpose of her invention was "to produce a cheap, simple, convenient and highly effective device, particularly adapted to be used in ironing the sleeves and bodies of ladies' garments." Berfore her ingenious invention, ironing clothes was done on the kitchen table or on a plank propped up between two chairs, which made getting into the curved shoulders of sleeves or complex bodices impossible. With the approval of her ironing board patent in 1892, Sarah Boone became one of the first African American women to be awarded a US patent.
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