Naming Names

What's in a name? A bit of Seabrook Island and Lowcountry history, that's what, enshrined in several of the street and place names we pass by every day. The picture above, for example, from about 1900, is of the Andell family whose Andell Bluff farm once included all of Seabrook Island. The name survives in the island's Andell Way and, of course, the Andell Inn at Freshfields. (That's patriarch William Andell, on the porch at upper right.)

The Andell home, c. 1890.

The Andells acquired their farm from the Gregg family in the 1880's and built a farmhouse on the banks of Bohicket Creek. It was one of the oldest homes still standing on Johns Island after it was restored by Andell granddaughter Betty Stringfellow, who lived there until her death in 2017 and who was a driving force in the 1980s behind the creation of SINHG. (The house, which stood just off today's Parkway near the traffic circle, was torn down a few years after Betty passed away.) During the more than fifty years the Andells owned the island, they farmed Sea Island cotton, raised hogs and chickens, and turned their dairy cows out on what is now Jenkins Point. The purchase of the island from the Andells by Julius Morawetz in 1938 marked the turning point from the island's agrarian past to its resort community future.

The Haulover Cut, looking northeast from Seabrook Island

The Andell house overlooked what was once the Haulover Cut, the inspiration Seabrook's cross-island roadway The Haulover. Long before the Andell's time, Bohicket Creek, connecting the Bohicket River to the Kiawah River and over which Parkway traffic now passes just before the traffic circle, presented an obstacle to river traffic traveling between the two waterways as the creek narrowed and grew shallow enough for river craft to run aground. Boats carrying produce or other cargo had to be unloaded at the site, so that both boat and cargo could be hauled over to the other side and deeper water to continue the journey. The first expansion of the Cut was undertaken by British troops in 1715. A bridge was in place by the time of a Civil War skirmish at the site between Union and Confederate troops in 1864; and by 1900, William Andell had devised a swiveling wooden bridge to allow river traffic easy passage.

Sea Island cotton, William Seabrook's contribution to island agriculture

And then, of course, there's the very name Seabrook. That would be for William Seabrook, the wealthy plantation owner on Edisto Island who bought what was then called Simmons Island from Ebenezer Simmons in 1816. Seabrook was the first to successfully grow Sea Island cotton on his new island before selling it in 1863 to William Gregg for $150,000 in Confederate money. The Greggs, as noted, sold the island twenty years later to the Andells, whose name remains securely tied, with William Seabrook's, to island history.

The Watcher In The Woods

You may never see one unless you're very lucky, but the reclusive bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a highly adaptable Lowcountry resident. Named for its truncated tail, the bobcat is most active from twilight to about midnight, and again from just before dawn until a few hours after sunrise, spending the rest of its time hidden away in a main den or in secondary lairs in hollow logs or dense thickets. It scent-marks its territory, which can vary from less than a square mile to over a hundred square miles, and will leave claw marks on prominent trees throughout its home area. Here on Seabrook, territories are toward the smaller end of the scale due to the island's human and residential density.

The bobcat's solitary nature adds to its aura of mystery, although males may tolerate other cats along the fringes of adjoining territories, and females may sometimes share a territory. The cats are opportunistic hunters, but here on the barrier islands the most common prey are rats and mice, rabbits and small birds. It will also attack snakes of all sizes, and even smaller deer. Like most cats, it hunts by stalking in deep cover, crouching motionless, then springing when the prey wanders closer.

Mating takes place during late winter and early spring, with litters of two to four kittens born in April and May, which the mother raises alone. The youngsters are weaned within five weeks and learn to hunt by following and watching Mom, usually striking off on their own by the time they're a year old. Bobcats can live up to ten years, although the oldest known wild bobcat survived to sixteen.

Unfortunately, the bobcat population on Seabrook and Kiawah plummeted due to the once widespread use of pesticides known as second generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGAs), which proved fatal when bobcats consumed mice and rats that were infected with the chemicals. The town governments of both Seabrook and Kiawah have joined the Bobcat Guardian Program, intended to raise awareness among residents and business owners about the effects of SGAs on wildlife. Happily, most pest control companies that service both islands have subscribed to the "Save Our Bobcats Pledge" to use alternative, less toxic chemicals. You can learn more about the Bobcat Guardian Program, and which companies have signed the pledge, here.

Although you might not see a bobcat, you will often see their tracks and scat while walking SINHG's Bobcat Trail. Look out for the claw marks on larger trees adjacent to the trail, and know that out there somewhere, a bobcat may be watching.

School's Out?

You may have noticed a "Save The Walnut Hill School" sign on the parkway, just north of Kiawah Town Hall. The call to arms is about another part of Johns Island history in danger of being lost to development, a one-room schoolhouse originally built in 1868 to teach children of once-enslaved families on the island.

The Walnut Hill School Museum, in better days

The school's first home was further to the northeast, near River Road; but, threatened with demolition in the 1990's as Bohicket Road was widened to form the Parkway, it was moved to its present site by Seabrook Island native and historian, Betty Stringfellow (1921 - 2017), who turned it into a museum dedicated to the history of John's Island. Now once again derelict, the old schoolhouse has avoided destruction for decades but is now threatened once again.

Another reminder of Johns and Seabrook Islands' educational history would hardly attract a

Promised Land school, 1955

second glance today, although it played a crucial role in providing educational opportunities for Black children in the days before desegregation of public schools. It's a modest concrete-block section incorporated into the former Chez Fish restaurant on the Parkway, the structure once standing on its own as a Rosenwald school for African-American children named the Promised Land Elementary School.

Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington

Rosenwald schools were the result of discussions in the early decades of the 20th-century between philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, then the president of Sears Roebuck, and Black educator Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee University in Alabama. The two men established the Rosenwald Fund and a matching grant model in which local African-American communities would supply the labor to build each school based on plans developed by Tuskegee faculty. Some five-thousand such schools were built throughout the South, including two along River Road in addition to the Promised Land school near Seabrook Island. Their purpose diminished by desegregation, only about ten per cent of the schools are still standing, so we're lucky to have this one small reminder of former struggles for educational equality.