Docudrama to be Filmed at Jenny Lind Chapel in Andover, Illinois

Getting set to film an historic debate scene for Sons & Daughters of Thunder at the Jenny Lind Chapel in Andover, Illinois.

By Star-Courier
January 2014

During January and February, part of a docudrama will be filmed at the historic Jenny Lind Chapel in Andover.

The film, “Sons & Daughters of Thunder,” takes place in 1834 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and depicts the first public discussions of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The shocking oratory sparked intense controversy and awakened a young Harriet Beecher Stowe to the horrors of slavery. The scenes at the chapel include a seminary convocation and three debates.

Stowe, whose anti-slavery writing inflamed sectional tension before the Civil War, is the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Years later the novel was described by President Abraham Lincoln as the book that started the Civil War.

There are approximately 40 cast and crew members. The company doing the documentary is Fourth Wall Films in Moline.

Preliminary filming was done in Cincinnati at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the old Lane Seminary grounds, as well as in areas in Kentucky and Illinois. Filming has also been done in Rock Island at The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum and at Augustana College’s House on the Hill.

During the 1830s and 1840s, Andover had underground railroad sites in several homes and businesses. Andover’s English settlers were very strong advocates of helping slaves flee to safe havens. On their way to freedom, their previous stop was in Galesburg, and their next stop after Andover was Princeton, Ill.

When the Swedish immigrants started arriving in Andover in the 1840’s, many of them also took up the cause of helping slaves on their way to freedom in the years before the Civil War.