By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Their last names are Mimms, White, Hendricks, Wooten and Brown, and they live as near as Lawrence Township and as far away as California but what they all have in common is their tie to Lawrence businessman A.C. Brown.
Sunday afternoon, about 250 descendents of A.C. Brown, whose A.C. Brown Complete Septic Service is still in business on Eggerts Crossing Road, gathered at Rosedale Park for the first of what the family hopes will be a biannual family reunion.
Three of A.C. and Mary Brown’s nine children there were six sons and three daughters spent the afternoon under the trees at the park, along with 30 grandchildren, 52 great-grandchildren and 79 great-great grandchildren and their spouses, mingling and watching out for the young children who darted around the park.
It has been more than 15 years since the family had gathered together, said Dolline Hendricks, one of those 30 grandchildren. Ms. Hendricks, along with several of her first cousins, helped to organize the event that they called the Brown Cousins’ Reunion.
”It’s important to know your roots and your heritage,” said Harold Brown, one of A.C. Brown’s three surviving children. “We have lost touch. (Family members) are scattered all over. We don’t know our nieces and nephews and grandchildren.”
A.C. Brown, whose legacy is the several businesses operated by his sons, was born in Pensacola, Fla. He moved with his family to the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood in Lawrence in 1918. He was 10 years old.
In an era when there were few black business owners, Mr. Brown started a trash pickup business in Lawrence during the 1920s. He plowed snow for the state Department of Transportation, and also operated a pig farm. He began the A.C. Brown Septic Service and Excavating Service, located on Eggerts Crossing Road, in 1947.
Ever the entrepreneur, Mr. Brown opened the Crossing Inn a few years later. During its heyday, the Crossing Inn was the largest black entertainment club on the East Coast, according to family members. Several of Mr. Brown’s children worked at the Crossing Inn.
The Crossing Inn featured black entertainers who ranged from James Brown, Etta James, Jerry Butler and Moms Mabley to Sam Cooke, Redd Foxx, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Ella Fitzgerald. But all that is left of the Crossing Inn is a grassy field.
Mr. Brown was considered to be a wealthy man by the standards of the day, said his granddaughter, Deborah Brown White. She is the daughter of Louis Brown, one of the six sons.
Taking a cue from their father, several of Mr. Brown’s sons established their own businesses.
A.C. Brown Jr. took over the septic and excavating business upon his father’s death. The business is still located on Eggerts Crossing Road. Another son, Louis Brown, also worked for the business as a foreman.
Harold Brown worked for his father, but left for a job at Princeton University. He also operated a small grocery store and gas station on Eggerts Crossing Road, before opening Brown’s Paving, which is located across the street from the septic and excavating business. His brother, Major Brown, worked with him in the paving business.
Ronald Brown owned and operated Brown’s Pool and Excavating Co. in Willingboro. Another brother, Albert Brown, moved to Chesterfield Township and opened a septic and excavation business his sons now operate.
While Mr. Brown’s nine children and their offspring were close, the younger generations drifted away from each other as the family prospered and grew, Ms. White said. Family was not the main focus, and cousins did not know one another, she said.
”We were very close knit,” Ms. White said of herself, her aunts and uncles and their children. But the ties began to break down by the time the great-grandchildren came along. They are not as familiar with each other as were the nine children and the 30 grandchildren, or first cousins, she said.
And that’s why the First Cousins Committee organized the reunion.
”We are all getting older, and we don’t know many cousins. There are a lot of cousins, and the next generation doesn’t know their cousins,” said Ms. Hendricks.
Jeremiah Mimms, 26, agreed.
”Most young people don’t know who we are or where we came from,” Mr. Mimms said. “I have met cousins that I never met before or that I don’t remember. It’s like coming to an event and you don’t really know anyone, but you do (know them) because you are all family.”

