The History of the Ironing Board

In 1832, Sarah Boone (née Marshall) was born to enslaved parents in North Carolina. At some point, she became a free woman, possibly though her marriage to freeman James Boone in 1847. The couple moved with their children and Sarah’s widowed mother to New Haven, Connecticut before the start of the Civil War, using a network tied to the Underground Railroad. Sarah began working as a dressmaker and her husband was employed as a bricklayer until his death in the 1870s. Despite coming from an area where it was illegal for her to learn to read or write, Sarah learned literacy skills, possibly through her membership at the Dixwell Congregational Church. In a bid to make her clothes stand out from others, she started designing more fitted dresses that matched the trends of the 1890s, but needed a way to iron them. Previously, dressmakers typically ironed their wares using a wooden plank placed across two chairs. The method worked just fine for wide skirts but wasn’t as effective for contoured material. To accommodate her designs, Sarah created a narrower, curved board that could slip into sleeves and bodices for effective ironing. She included padding on her ironing board to eliminate the unwanted impressions that unpadded wooden boards could leave on fabric and also made her design collapsible for easy storage. She then used her writing skills to apply for a patent. It was granted in 1892, making her one of the first Black women to earn a patent in the United States. Sarah died in 1904 and there is little evidence that she benefited from the commercialization of her invention, but the ironing board became increasingly indispensable in the 20th century. Today, her invention is celebrated as the direct prototype of the modern ironing board.