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   Blackgendermoderate ? (blackgendermoderate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Aug-2023 10:31:11 JST Blackgendermoderate ?
   Sarah Boone was born into slavery and married a freedman at age 15. It's alleged that either she escaped her captors or her husband bought her freedom. Eventually, she took up dressmaking as a profession. 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. Her design was issued US Patent # 473,653 on April 26, 1892.
   
   Mrs Boone was one of the first Black American women to be issued a patent. I'm not sure if the photo below is hers, but this is my best guess. I was not able to find confirmation on whether her patent was the precursor to the modern board. I've read various articles and seen numerous errors or disputed parts of her history. I prefer to stick to the facts, which seem to be that she was one of the first Black women issued patents in the United States, and that she had one for an ironing board designed to help iron women's clothing, for which contemporary ironing boards were not suited towards.