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Historian visits Valley Stream for a look back in time

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Before Valley Stream was named for the waterway that cuts through it, it was part of Fosters Meadow, an agricultural community mostly populated by farmers of German heritage.

The area bore several other monikers before the village was incorporated in 1925, but the Fosters Meadow period was the focus of historian Raymond Hoeffner’s presentation to the Valley Stream Historical Society on Sept. 17 at the Valley Stream Community Center.

The community formed in the 1850’s, Hoeffner said. Its residents were what were known as market or truck farmers because they would bring their wares to the cities of Brooklyn and New York on wagons and eventually motorized vehicles, piled high with produce. One of those farmers, George Reisert, worked a plot of land located roughly around where the Green Acres Mall is now. That farm was eventually sold to Curtiss Airfield, which operated until 1933.

Hoeffner described a community that thrived as more German-speaking people moved there from Brooklyn and western Queens. The area known as Fosters Meadow included present-day North Valley Stream, Valley Stream, Elmont, Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, Cambria Heights and Franklin Square in the towns of Jamaica and Hempstead. Two German-speaking Catholic churches, St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church in 1854 and St Paul’s German Evangelical Church in 1864, were established. Social clubs were formed, including the Young Farmers Light Guard. The community became a hub of German-speaking culture in the region, Hoeffner said.

Hoeffner’s own relatives were part of that community. He spoke about finding his surname listed in several places during the course of his research.

Another descendant listened from the audience. Madeline Reisert-Schlichtig said she lived on her father’s farm on Wheeler Avenue in North Valley Stream from her childhood until 1948. The West Hempstead resident, now in her eighties, said her relatives agreed to hang on to their plots until they were all ready to leave.

“The family decided they would only sell as a group – they wouldn’t sell individually,” she said.