A prominent brick building visible from many parts of Cumberland, Town Clock Church stands today as a vital reminder of Western Maryland's German immigrants. In the early 1700s, English entrepreneur Thomas Dulany first lured German settlers from Pennsylvania and Germany to Maryland with inexpensive 300-acre farms around the town of Frederick. With the American population constantly pushing west, German farmers from Frederick were among the first pioneers to move into extreme western Maryland, helping establish Fort Cumberland in the 1750s. By the 1800s, English settlers made up the majority of Cumberland's population, although numerous Germans still resided in the area.

In the early 1800s, German and English Lutherans of Cumberland all attended St. Paul's Lutheran Church. In the late 1830s, large numbers of Germans began moving to Cumberland to work in the coal fields just west of Cumberland. In 1844, with their numbers growing rapidly, German speakers at St. Paul's held a worship service all in German. In 1847, against the backdrop of "Americanization," English speaking members of St. Paul's informed German speakers that no more services in an "alien" language would be conducted in the building.