Take a drive up Bellmore Road from Parkway School and glance at the street names: Rowehl Drive, Hilda Street, Granz Court. These German-influenced names are the result of land sales from a prominent farming family on East Meadow's eastern edge. The Rowehl family owned 219 acres south of Hempstead Turnpike and, for four generations, became a significant part of the local economy and culture. In 1854, Diedrich Gerhard Rowehl purchased the land from Theodore and Pauline Pietycker. Their task was to clear the thick brush that covered the entire Hempstead, or "Brushy", Plains area and make the land suitable for farming. The original homestead was constructed — and still stands — at 177 Bellmore Road.
Potatoes were king on the fields of East Meadow, Island Trees, Hicksville, and Jerusalem: the healthy crop was cultivated and used locally. The Rowehls subsisted selling potatoes and hay to places like Cooper's Field in Hempstead. Forty-eight descendants of the original settler made their homes on the property and worked in the family's farming business. The Rowehl and Granz families became notable for a large nursery that included greenhouses, barns, and a windmill for power. They were "truck farmers" and made their living off the ever-growing New York City population's need for food. The vegetables they grew were taken by horse, and later by motor vehicle, to Wallabout Market in Brooklyn for sale. A simple trip to the Brooklyn marketplace could take nine hours. Other businesses in East Meadow did the same.
By the 1890s, business was booming. The Queens County Sentinel reported in 1897 that "Messrs. Rowehl & Granz, the enterprising nurserymen, are doing a rushing business in shrubs and fruit trees . . ." The writers urged "lovers of the beautiful" to visit the family's nurseries. The following year, the paper reported that they "are busily engaged in placing trees and plants around the premises of O.H.P. Belmont." Belmont's mansion on Front Street was no small matter!