Poplar Island Castways

Oil on Canvas  30"x40"

Here's what's going on:  Loosely derived from the facts of one my ancestor's life, a free family whose matriarch has been an abolitionist activist and a slave with hopes of running to freedom join together in fleeing from a volatile District of Columbia soon after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act.  Mother Nature delays their arrival in free territory while sailing north through the Chesapeake Bay.  The Apalachicola Storm of 1851 (a hurricane) has blown northward from its Floridian namesake and sunk their schooner, overloaded with voyagers of a similar plight and with too few life boats available for evacuation.  Our family, however, has survived and are washed ashore at Poplar Island,  an island once large enough to host a community towards the end of the 19th century.  However, in the 1850s, there was no population to speak of.   As you can now tell, detail abounds under the surface of this painting that I hope some may find intriguing enough to ask "okay what's going on here?"