Sarah Elisabeth Goode (1855 – April 8, 1905) was an American entrepreneur and inventor. She was one of the first known African American women to receive a United States patent, which she received in 1885 for her cabinet bed.
Biography
Born in 1855 in Toledo, Ohio to Oliver and Harriet (Kaufman) Jacobs, Goode was originally named Sarah Elisabeth Jacobs. When she was young, her father worked as a waiter, and her mother kept the house. Her mother also served as an organizer for the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in Toledo, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Little is known about Goode’s early life, but before 1870, Goode’s family moved to Chicago, Illinois, and her father began working in carpentry. There, she married Archibald Goode and had children with him. Their known children are daughters Estella, Inza (or Inez), Harriet (Hattie), Edna, and Sarah Goode. Archibald worked as a stair builder and an upholsterer, and he and Sarah opened a furniture store.
Invention and furniture store years
In 1885, Sarah and her husband operated a furniture store at 513 State Street in Chicago. The space was located at Bennett Medical College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery which housed the storefront. A Chicago Tribune article from September 1884 mentioned that S E Goode was exhibiting her French Flat Folding-Bed at the 32nd Annual Illinois State Fair. She had sent in her invention paperwork with the help of attorney George P. Barton of Chicago in November of 1883. It would be $35 in fees and twenty months of waiting, getting rejected, making adjustments, and resubmitting before she would finally receive the patent. By 1887, that furniture store was no longer on record. However, there was a furniture listing under Archie's name further down State Street.
Concept of the folding bed
Most customers of Goode's furniture store were working-class people who lived in small apartments that couldn’t fit a lot of furniture, including beds. As well as this, at the time of her invention, New York City passed a law that restricted buildings to be under 80 feet. Tenement buildings were also restricted to footprints of 25 feet by 100 feet. As Goode heard this problem from her customers in Chicago, she set out to help Chicago apartment dwellers with limited space in their apartments. Goode invented a folding bed that would become the precursor to the Murphy Bed - a hide-away bed. It was a cabinet bed which folded into a roll-top desk which had compartments for writing supplies and stationery. Her goal for was to balance the weight of the folding of the bed so it could be easily lifted up and held in its place and also provide supplementary support to the center of the bed when it was unfolded. In 1885, for her invention of the folding bed, Goode was one of the first African American women to receive a US patent. The patented folding bed would inspire the modern-day Murphy bed.
Early patents among African American women
Sarah E. Goode was the fourth African American woman known to have received a US patent. The first and second were Martha Jones of Amelia County, Virginia, for her 1868 corn-husker upgrade and Mary Jones De Leon of Baltimore, Maryland, for her 1873 cooking apparatus. Judy W. Reed’s dough roller was the third, patented in 1884, one year before Sarah's cabinet bed. The Patent Office did not ask applicants to specify race on patent applications, only for confirmation that the patentee was an American citizen.