RUMFORD — Charles Plummer, well-known for his living history portrayals of Gen. Joshua Chamberlain and other famous historical figures, will portray the local teacher who invented the blackboard and eraser.
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10, at Ridge School, a restored one-room schoolhouse on Route 9 in Lisbon Falls, Plummer will bring Samuel Read Hall back to life for the Lisbon Historical Society event.
Hall, who was born in 1795 in New Hampshire and died in 1877 in Vermont, first taught school in 1816 in Rumford, where his father, the town’s first Congregational minister, served.
The founder of the first teacher training school in America, Hall’s first blackboard was a large sheet of dark paper, which could be marked on and easily erased, according to his biography on the Old Stone House Museum website in Brownington, Vt.
He first used it to illustrate arithmetic.
“At first, the inhabitants of the (Rumford) district, ridiculed his novel method of demonstration, but he persisted in its use and to the entire satisfaction of all concerned,” said J.M. Currier from an interview with Hall in 1870.
“His object was to enable the scholar to have confidence enough in himself to demonstrate examples to others, and thus become better qualified for teaching,” Currier said.
He said that afterward, Hall used this method of illustration in several other Maine towns and became a successful and popular teacher.
Currier writes that in 1822 at Concord, Hall had plastering painted black and used it in the same manner as blackboards today are used.
He said Hall also invented the blackboard eraser, crafting it from a small board and tacking to it sheepskin tanned with the wool on it.
Author William B. Lapham also credited Hall with the invention of the blackboard in Rumford. Lapham wrote the “History of Rumford, Oxford County, Maine, From its First Settlement in 1779 to the Present Time (1890).”
The Lisbon Historical Society event is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to wear something from the 1800s and bring their own bag lunch or snack. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
For more information, contact Dorothy J. Smith at 353-8510 or LHS.2011@yahoo.com, or http://lisbonmainehistory.org.
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- Charles Plummer portrays Samuel Read Hall, who invented the blackboard in 1816 in Rumford while teaching school.
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- District 9 School in East Rumford in 1816.
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