Children in Brown Grove used to walk five miles to school.

Frances Jackson Jones, 89, remembers the long trek along Ashcake Road to the school in Ashland. Other schools were closer, but they were for white children.

Ashcake was a gravel road back then. Nowadays, she says, the road is so busy that debris blows off trucks and litters her yard, at Ashcake and Lewistown roads. It’s an unwelcome change, and one of many.

Brown Grove, a predominantly black community in Hanover County, was settled by freed slaves during Reconstruction after the Civil War. It is along Ashcake Road roughly from Cheroy Road to Brown Grove Baptist Church and includes Johnson Town and Egypt roads.

The land has been passed down to relatives for generations, and most of Brown Grove’s residents are related. The historic community has held together despite what some residents say is a long list of encroachments—mostly in the form of industrial development, but the latest fear is a proposed subdivision by Hanover Habitat for Humanity.

“I think that what they’re doing is they’re moving us out,” says Betty Lozano, 69, who lives on Ashcake Road next door to her daughter and two doors down from her sister.

Interstate 95 clipped part of Brown Grove when it opened in the early 60s. The Hanover County airport opened in 1971, and industries popped up nearby, spreading development toward Brown Grove. In 1997, residents on Johnson Town Road opposed an extension of an airport runway, but to no avail.

The next year, residents’ concerns about further industrial development prompted the county to amend its comprehensive plan to designate some land along Ashcake Road for residential use rather than industrial use. There are plans to eventually build a business park on Brown Grove’s eastern edge.

Beginning in 1998, a revitalization project paid for by state and local money connected 26 Brown Grove homes to public water and 15 to sewer service. There are about 70 homes in the community.

The county rehabilitated 20 homes, razed nine derelict buildings and bought and rezoned property for eight Habitat houses, which were built in the past four years on Ashcake and Johnson Town Roads.

The new proposal by Hanover Habitat to build a subdivision off Ashcake Road has inflamed residents of Brown Grove and the nearby Cheroy Woods subdivision.

Brown Grove residents emphasize that they have nothing against Habitat but say further concentration of Habitat homes could hurt their property values.

Hanover Habitat’s plan consists of eight homes and one existing house that Habitat has purchased. Habitat would sell two other lots to another developer.

Given the widespread opposition, the Board of Supervisors voted last month to have the Planning Commission take another look at Habitat’s proposal.

Tim Bowring, Hanover Habitat’s executive director, said Friday that its board will bring new plans before the Planning Commission at some point. He said it could involve partnering with a developer to build about 10 Habitat homes for the county’s work force.

In the past four years, eight Habitat homes were built in the Brown Grove area: four on Ashcake Road and four on nearby Johnson Town Road. There are 32 Habitat homes in the county.

Leizer Coleman lives on Ashcake Road on land that was handed down from her great-great-grandfather. One of her first cousins lives in one of the existing Habitat houses.

Just down the street from Coleman’s house is a tiny building on Jones’ property that used to be a store. Now it houses Jones’ son-in-law’s shoeshine parlor.

It’s also a place for the men of Brown Grove to shoot the breeze on Saturdays. No smoking, drinking or profanity is allowed.

Some of the concerns about further Habitat development have much to do with the ideas of outsiders moving in to the close-knit, historic neighborhood, Coleman said.

“You don’t know where they’re coming from,” she said.