Strong was granted a U.S. patent for a window sash holder, continuing her series of household mechanical inventions.
On November 16, 1886, Harriet Williams Russell Strong received a U.S. patent for a window sash holder, a device intended to secure window sashes in place. This patent continued the pattern established by her earlier 1884 window-related invention, showing sustained interest in improving household mechanisms during the mid-1880s.
This period of Strong's life was marked by significant personal and financial hardship: she had been widowed and left with substantial debt and four daughters to support, following her husband's death. Rather than retreating from public or economic life, Strong pursued inventive and entrepreneurial activities as a means of financial self-sufficiency, a bold choice for a woman of her era.
The window sash holder patent is historically significant as part of the documented record of five patents attributed to Strong by institutions such as the Whittier Museum. It exemplifies how women inventors of the nineteenth century often used patenting as an avenue toward economic independence when traditional employment opportunities were limited. Strong's persistence in generating patentable ideas during a time of personal crisis foreshadowed the resilience and ingenuity she would later bring to her far more ambitious and impactful water-storage and dam-construction patents, which would establish her legacy as a pioneer of dry-land irrigation engineering in California.