Sidi And The Butcher Oak

The Limehouse Country Store on Main Road, in 1964

If you've shopped at Rosebank Farms, or crossed the bridge on Main Road over the Stono River, you've noticed the name Limehouse. The bridge is named after Julian "John" Limehouse, who for years during the early and mid-twentieth century ran a country store across from a ferry landing which, at the time, was the only way to cross from the mainland to Johns Island. (The landing was near the end of River Road, just before it joins Main Road.) Limehouse was famous for his homemade sausages sold from a stand under a live oak, which still stands, known as "the butcher oak."

Limehouse came from a centuries-old line of Limehouses who first emigrated from Britain in the early 18th-century. The Limehouse name comes with a legend. On the crossing from Britain, the story goes, one of the ancestral John Limehouse's sons fell overboard and was rescued by an Arab-born crew member named Sidi. In gratitude, Limehouse decreed that from then on, one son born in each generation would be named Sidi.

Sidi Limehouse (2015 photo)

Today's Sidi, who is John II's son and who turns 87 this year, is a well-known and life-long presence on Johns Island. Born in 1938 when Johns Island was a still-rural paradise for a young boy, Sidi's father celebrated the birth by buying the 3,000-acre Mullet Hall property, a former cotton plantation that had lain idle since the 1920's. The family raised cattle and grew potatoes on the land which is now a county park.

Sidi contemplated leaving the Lowcountry only once, after graduating from Clemson with a degree in agricultural engineering and flying north for job interviews in the Midwest. But a snowstorm stranded him in Chicago for three days, and that was enough for him. "I said no, I'm going back home and stick with the cows," Sidi remembered for the Johns Island Conservancy.

Rosebank Farms, in about 1980

Starting in the 1970's, Sidi began Rosebank Farms on sixty leased acres and sold his produce -fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and honey - from a farm stand that quickly became a fixture of island life. Some of the produce sold had never been grown on Johns Island, like the pumpkins Sidi planted against advice from his Clemson peers. In recent years, he was instrumental in working with the developers of the new Kiawah River to reserve part of the land for agriculture, as the first "agrihood" on Johns Island. His efforts have been recognized with a basketful of conservation awards and a Southeast Farmer Of The Year award from the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition. With his 87th birthday looming later this year, Sidi may not be as actively involved in Rosebank's day-to-day operation but, as he says, "I do a lot of the pointing."

Keeping It Clean

You've probably seen them roosting on rooftops at Freshfields, those hulking black silhouettes of the turkey vulture . Few would consider these impressive birds beautiful, but they serve a crucial function in Lowcountry ecology as nature's sanitation engineers, diligently consuming carrion and other odiferous items that would otherwise lay rotting and flyblown. This is the chief difference between vultures and buzzards, the latter being active hunters rather than opportunistic scavengers.

A gray vulture on the wing

South Carolina has two species of vulture - the gray vulture (Cathartes aura), distinguished by the gray underside feathering of its wings, and the black vulture (Coryagus atratus), which is nearly all black except for gray "fingers" on its wingtips. These two are examples of convergent evolution, for they belong to different taxonomic orders but evolved separately along similar lines. They both have wingspans of up to five feet, and on the wing both exhibit the characteristic "wobbling" flight as they ride thermals far above the ground in search of food.

Vultures have one of the keenest senses of smell in the animal kingdom, and gray vultures can detect the odor of carrion from many feet in the air. (Black vultures tend to swoop closer to the ground to pick up the scent, or spot their next meal by sight.) With their hairless, bright red heads and hooked beaks, vultures can consume even a large carcass in a matter of hours. Despite their feisty appearance, vultures are highly social, forming close bonds marked by sharing food and nesting sites, at which the female lays three or four eggs on the ground. Both parents see to the chicks after hatching.

But strangers to the group (including humans who come too near) should beware, for one of the vulture's chief defense mechanisms is to vomit on intruders - given their diet, a formidable challenge. Vultures have an extremely high acid level in their stomach, allowing them to consume even diseased carrion with no ill effects. One other fun vulture fact: on hot summer days, vultures will defecate on their feet to cool off.

The word vulture most likely comes from the Latin vellere, which means to pluck or tear, but far more pleasant is the gray vulture's Latin name Cathartes aura, which can be translated as "purifying breeze", a more poetic rendering of this native bird's ability to keep our yards and roadsides clean.

The Struggle On Johns Island

February is Black History Month and a time to mark the important role Johns Island played during the Civil Rights era. Important figures such as Septima Clark and Esau Jenkins lived and centered their activities on the island, with their legacy carried forward by others today.

Septima Clark

Septima Poinsette Clark (1891 - 1987), born and raised in Charleston during the Reconstruction era, is still honored as the "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights movement and came to Johns Island in 1916 when, as an African-American, she was barred from teaching in white schools in the city. She not only taught children at the old Promised Land school on what is now Betsy Kerrison Parkway, but taught still-illiterate adults to read and write, sometimes using the Sears Roebuck catalog as a teaching tool. By the late 1920's, she had joined the Charleston chapter of the NAACP, which led to her dismissal by the all-white Charleston County school board. Undaunted, Clark undertook a variety of NAACP initiatives throughout the Southeast to improve literacy rates for Blacks. By the late 1940's, Clark had become a major figure in the establishment of Citizenship Schools teaching reading, writing and basic business skills to Black children and adults.

Esau Jenkins

One such school was here on Johns Island, founded with the help of Johns Island native Esau Jenkins (1910 - 1972) as The Progressive Club on River Road. Jenkins and fellow Johns Island native Joe Williams had raised money for the legal defense of a Black neighbor who, in 1948, had been shot while defending himself against an attack by a white farmer's dog. When a judge dismissed the case that had been filed against the farmer, Jenkins and Williams raised enough money for a successful appeal of the ruling, and the eventual conviction of the farmer for aggravated assault.

Shopping at The Progressive Club

Soon, Jenkins and Williams organized the Progressive Club to help build a permanent legal defense fund, as well as to serve as a food cooperative and social center for Johns Island Blacks. In 1954, Jenkins attended a workshop at the socially progressive Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee, where he met Clark and others involved with the Citizenship School movement, and was inspired to adapt The Progressive Club as one such school teaching the literacy skills necessary to vote.

The Progressive Club site

The Club's site is now a National Historic Landmark, although all that remains of the original building are its crumbling cinderblock walls, the only survivors of the uninsured structure after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. But the Progressive Club as an organization is still active on Johns Island, carrying on the work of Clark and Jenkins for social justice.