LAWRENCE — The bells atop City Hall will toll Sunday at 4:45 p.m.
It was at that time on Jan. 10, 1860, that 88 people died and 200 more were injured when the roof of the Pemberton Mill collapsed and caught fire.
Louise Sandberg, archivist of the special collections department at Lawrence Public Library, asked Mayor William Lantigua to ring the carillon to remember the victims.
"It's so terribly sad. I thought it was time for this particular story to be told so it would not be forgotten," Sandberg said.
Sandberg, along with her husband, Dr. Michael Sandberg, a vision researcher at Harvard Medical School, has written a script for a documentary about the tragic event.
The Sandbergs' son, Matt, owner of Tru Bru Productions of Boston, received a $3,500 grant from the Lawrence Cultural Council for the project.
"I wanted to tell a basic story from other people's interpretations," Louise Sandberg said.
The Sandbergs have been working on the documentary for six months and it will be part of an exhibit at Lawrence Heritage State Park in February. It also will feature newspaper articles about the mill collapse, etchings, line drawings and photographs.
Matt Sandberg has shot footage of Great Stone Dam, Campagnone Common and the new Pemberton Mill, which was built on the site of the original mill in 1861.
He also flew to Florida to interview Alvin Oickle, author of "The Pemberton Casualties" and "Disaster in Lawrence."
The documentary's working title is, "The Case Against Captain Charles Bigelow" named after the mill's architect and engineer. After investigating the cause of the catastrophe, it was found that workers used hollow cast iron pillars to hold up the building.
Jim Beauchesne, visitor services supervisor at Lawrence Heritage State Park, will be one of the narrators.
"This is a major event in American industrial and labor history, not as far as workers and unions, but looking at some of the issues they face, like safety," Beauchesne said.
"I'm thrilled that Louise is taking it on because this is such an important historical event," Beauchesne said.
