Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

I wish I could have known my maternal grandfather. I am told I am like him in many ways. He was a visionary, risk taker, entrepreneur and a man of great faith. He died seven years before I was born. My mom and her sibling’s stories about him kept him in my mind as one who changed the landscape of his descendants’ lives and encouraged us to have faith and dream big.

My grandfather, William Sweedy Cozzens was born in 1884 in Merry Hill, Bertie County. By the time he was teenager, his family moved to Bath, and a few years later to Washington. By the time he was 23, he owned his own business as a drayman, and he opened his own restaurant.

A drayman was a person who owned a cart and a horse or mule and was a public service carrier. They received passengers at the Atlantic Coastline Train Depot and would carry a passenger, luggage or light freight throughout the city for a fee.

He did so well as a drayman he opened the Tuxedo Restaurant on Gladden Street which was known as ‘Prosperity Row.’ The restaurant opened in 1915 and stayed open until a few years after his death in 1944.

It amazed me that he prospered even during War World I, a time that was catastrophic to many small businesses. His dream was that he could come to Washington, start a business, and make a good life for his wife and their six children. He did just that, owning his own home and a good piece of property on what was then known as Fourth Street in a neighborhood of other very well to do Black entrepreneurs, city leaders and physicians.

His friendship with another man, Mr. Sing Lee, born in China in 1854 was also an inspiration to me. Sing Lee came to Washington in 1894 with the dream of providing his family with the same dream as my grandfather.

Sing Lee owned and operated Washington’s first Chinese Laundry in 1896. His laundry was located near the corner of Main and Respess Streets, (where Copper Canyon Wellness Center is today.) He prospered at that location and saw his dream realized. He later in the early 1920’s gave the business to his son George Lee, who operated in the same excellence as his father.

George later moved the business from Main Street to North Market Street. In the late 1930’s George sold the cleaners to a local businessman and moved to Norfolk Va. to open another laundry business. The legendary Lee Chinese Laundry became what may be remembered by some as Stowe Cleaners.

What made this unlikely pair, born on two different continents, want to come to Washington, to realize their dream of owning their own business, raising a prosperous family and business, and leaving such a great legacy for so many?

Because Washington has always been on the economic radar as a town where all can prosper if they work hard, have a great business ethic and respect for people and let their excellence be the best advertising to bring in customers.

Thanks to my grandfather and Mr. Sing Lee, I too reach for excellence in what God has given me to do….for His glory.