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History of the Dumbhundred
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An overview of how Dumbhundred developed as a working neighborhood and became part of Cumberland’s historic landscape. It introduces the people, buildings, streets, institutions, and traditions explored throughout this series.
Town Clock Church:
A Dumbhundred Landmark
Built by Cumberland’s German Lutheran community beginning in 1848, the historic church at 312 Bedford Street has been a place of worship, a public timekeeper, and one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks for more than 175 years. Its clock tower and steeple rise prominently above Bedford Street, overlooking the historic Dumbhundred neighborhood and remaining visible from many parts of Cumberland.
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Winter, 2025 photograph by Dan Mullin
A Church Built by a Community
The story of the Town Clock Church begins with Cumberland’s growing German-speaking population. German Lutherans had worshiped at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, where pastors sometimes conducted services in German. As additional German immigrants settled in Cumberland, however, the arrangement no longer provided a satisfactory permanent home for the congregation.
The German-speaking Lutherans organized separately in 1838. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church was formally incorporated on February 12, 1848.
On New Year’s Day in 1848, the German congregation learned that it would no longer be permitted to hold services at St. Paul’s. According to the congregation’s traditional history, Cumberland Mayor Thomas Shriver encouraged its leaders to construct a church of their own. He offered them a building site and stone from his quarry.
The new church was designed by Harry Schmenner, a German-speaking member of the congregation. John Hassel and other congregation members participated in its construction. The granite cornerstone was laid on June 1, 1848, less than six months after the congregation lost its former place of worship. The date remains inscribed on the cornerstone in German: “Juni 1, 1848.” (germanmarylanders.org, apps.mht.maryland.gov)
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The granite cornerstone of the Town Clock Church records the date of its placement in German: “Juni 1, 1848.” Photograph by Dan Mullin, 2026
The Race for Cumberland’s Clock
While the German Lutherans were constructing their church on Bedford Street, Cumberland’s German Catholics were building Saints Peter and Paul Church in another part of the city. The two churches are separate historic buildings, but their construction became connected through one of Cumberland’s best-known local traditions.
The Cumberland City Council reportedly offered to provide a public clock to whichever congregation completed its church tower first. The offer created a friendly competition between the German Lutherans and German Catholics.
According to the traditional account, Lutheran women held lanterns and torches during the night so that the men could continue working on the tower after dark. The Lutheran congregation won the contest.
The church was completed and dedicated on March 17, 1850. The clock itself, purchased by the City of Cumberland for fifty dollars, was installed in the tower in June 1857. From then on, the clock served not only the congregation but also the surrounding community. It marked the hours for residents living and working below the church and gave the building the familiar name by which generations of Cumberland residents have known it: the Town Clock Church. (whilbr.org, germanmarylanders.org)
An Architectural Landmark
The Town Clock Church is modest in overall size but commanding in appearance. It is a one-story, gable-front brick church constructed on a high stone basement. The main building is three bays wide and four bays long.
A four-part clock tower rises from the eastern end of the slate roof. Its clock faces look in four directions. Above them, the tower narrows into an octagonal belfry and a tall slate-covered spire.
The front of the church includes brick pilasters, round-arched stained-glass windows, a circular stained-glass window, and an entrance portico supported by Ionic columns. German words remain above the entrance, while the German date on the cornerstone provides a direct architectural connection to the immigrant congregation that built the church.
The Maryland Historical Trust has noted that the church remains basically unaltered and that the combination of its tower and hillside location gives the building unusual prominence in Cumberland’s cityscape. (apps.mht.maryland.gov, apps.mht.maryland.gov)
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A close view of the Town Clock Church showing its brick walls, high stone basement, arched windows, entrance portico, four-faced clock tower, belfry, and spire.
Photographs by Dan Mullin, circa 2025.
Standing Above Dumbhundred
Although the Town Clock Church stands just outside the formal boundary of the historic Dumbhundred neighborhood, it occupies the hillside at the neighborhood’s edge and prominently overlooks it.
Because of this elevated setting, the church can be seen from many locations throughout Dumbhundred and from numerous other points around Cumberland. Its tower and steeple rise above nearby houses and rooftops, making the building a familiar direction finder and point of orientation for residents.
The church may also be seen from a location close to Cumberland’s Amtrak station and at various points along the way toward the Cumberland post office. Passengers aboard the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad can glimpse the clock tower through the train windows as they approach or depart Cumberland Station on the journey to and from Frostburg.
Each view is slightly different. From one street, only the upper steeple may appear above the rooftops. From another location, the clock tower and much of the church can be seen standing against the hillside. Together, these changing views make the Town Clock Church part of the everyday visual identity of both Cumberland and Dumbhundred.
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The Town Clock Church rising above Bedford Street and the surrounding
Dumbhundred neighborhood in winter. Photograph by Dan Mullin, circa 2025.
Hard Years and a Famous Visitor
The church’s surviving history also records the human cost of one of Cumberland’s most difficult nineteenth-century emergencies.
On August 10, 1853, cholera appeared in Cumberland. A parish account reported the deaths of sixteen fathers, six mothers, and many children from the congregation. The epidemic was so severe that burials were conducted at night. The congregation’s pastor, the Rev. Casimer Bauman, also became seriously ill and was unable to compile a complete list of those who died.
The account turns what might otherwise seem like a distant historical epidemic into a deeply personal community tragedy—one remembered in terms of parents, children, families, and neighbors.
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In 1866, nationally known abolitionist, clergyman, reformer, and orator Henry Ward Beecher preached at the Town Clock Church. Beecher was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although surviving accounts do not identify the subject of his Cumberland sermon, his appearance connected the Bedford Street church with the larger religious and reform movements that followed the Civil War. (germanmarylanders.org, whilbr.org)
Henry Ward Beecher, photographed between 1855 and 1865. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.
St. Luke’s Moves to a New Home
St. Luke’s gradually changed along with the generations it served. An English-speaking pastor was called during the 1890s, although German continued to be used in worship until 1920. The change reflected a congregation balancing its German heritage with the language spoken by its children and grandchildren.
In 1914, St. Luke’s purchased property at the corner of Bedford and Columbia Streets for a larger church. The First World War delayed construction, but the congregation finally moved to its new Gothic-style church on June 5, 1927.
St. Luke’s later moved again. Its present church on Frederick Street was dedicated on May 1, 1960. The original Bedford Street building, however, remained in religious use and began another long chapter in its history. (germanmarylanders.org, stlukescumberland.org)
The First Christian Church Years
After St. Luke’s departure, the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, began using the Bedford Street building. Sources differ slightly on whether its first services there occurred in 1927 or whether the building formally became the First Christian Church in 1931. What is clear is that the congregation became the church’s second long-term steward and cared for the property for approximately eighty-five years.
The Town Clock Church was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on August 6, 1979. Its National Register reference number is 79001107, and its Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties number is AL-IV-A-102.
A Maryland Historical Trust preservation easement was recorded in 1989 at Liber 581, folio 47. The easement provided an additional form of protection for the building’s historic character. (apps.mht.maryland.gov, apps.mht.maryland.gov)
By 2016, First Christian Church had dwindled to only a small number of active members. The congregation faced the difficult expense of maintaining the historic property and placed it on the market.
At the time of the sale, the building was described as containing approximately 7,835 square feet, historic stained-glass windows, and a notable Möller pipe organ. The organ, identified as Opus No. 36, was described in 2016 as one of the earliest surviving instruments constructed by the Möller Organ Company and as retaining many of its original features. (cbsnews.com)
The Documented 2016 Transfer
The Maryland land record examined in preparing this article records the transfer of the property from First Christian Church to Washington First Church. The deed is dated December 28, 2016, and is identified as document number 0022670166. It records a fee-simple transfer of the property for $110,000.
The deed identifies the church property as 312 Bedford Street and refers to an earlier ownership record at Liber 192, folio 222, dated November 27, 1941. It also states that the property remains subject to the Maryland Historical Trust preservation easement recorded in 1989.
This description records the documented 2016 transfer without assuming that no later change in ownership may have occurred.
Why the Town Clock Church Matters
The Town Clock Church is important not simply because of its age. It preserves several closely connected Cumberland stories.
It represents the determination of German immigrants to worship in their own language. It reflects the skill and labor of congregation members who helped construct their own permanent church. Its public clock recalls a time when a tower clock served an entire community. The building also witnessed epidemic, war, changing languages, famous visitors, and the succession of congregations that kept it in use.
For the residents of Dumbhundred, the church is also a point of orientation and memory. Its tower appears above rooftops, in historic postcards, in aerial photographs, and in generations of family pictures. Even though the church stands immediately outside the formal neighborhood boundary, it remains one of the landmarks most closely associated with the appearance and identity of Dumbhundred.
Preserving the Town Clock Church means caring for more than brick, stone, stained glass, a clock, an organ, and a spire. It means keeping visible the work, faith, determination, and community spirit of the people who helped shape Cumberland and the neighborhood below it.
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"Its steeple rose 150 feet from the ground and extended 100 feet above the roof."
-Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, Maryland, 1878
The historic Town Clock Church continues to stand prominently above Bedford Street, overlooking the Dumbhundred neighborhood and serving as
one of Cumberland’s most familiar landmarks. Photograph by Dan Mullin, 2026.
What an 1878 History Reported
Will H. Lowdermilk’s History of Cumberland, Maryland, published in Washington, D.C., in 1878, provides an especially valuable early description of the Town Clock Church because it appeared only 28 years after the building was completed. Lowdermilk reported that Cumberland’s German Lutherans began worshipping separately from the English Lutheran congregation in 1839 and initially heard services preached in their native German language. In the spring of 1848, the congregation—then numbering only 35 members—began erecting the “massive structure” on Bedford Street. The church was designed in the Tuscan architectural style by Henry Smeanner, identified as a member of the congregation.
Its steeple rose 150 feet from the ground and extended 100 feet above the roof. Within its tower was what Lowdermilk described in 1878 as Cumberland’s only town clock or public means of announcing the time. The cornerstone was laid in June 1849 with an imposing public procession that included clergy, professional gentlemen, the mayor and City Council, Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Sons of Temperance, Red Men, the German Society, church trustees, and members of the congregation. The church was finished and formally dedicated on March 17, 1850. Lowdermilk praised the large and spacious building as a monument to the determination, energy, and perseverance of the German Lutheran families who constructed it.
Source: Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, Maryland (Washington, D.C.: J. Anglim, 1878), pp. 474–476. The Library of Congress identifies this digitized book as being in the public domain and free to use and reuse. View the complete book through the Library of Congress.
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Two Historic Churches on Bedford Street
The Town Clock Church and First Baptist Church stand only a short distance apart on Bedford Street and can be seen together in the photograph above. Both buildings date to Cumberland’s period of rapid growth in the late 1840s, but they were erected by separate congregations and have distinct histories.
The Town Clock Church at 312 Bedford Street was constructed for Cumberland’s German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran congregation. Its members had previously worshiped in association with St. Paul’s Lutheran Church but wanted services and preaching in their native language. They organized a separate congregation and erected the building that eventually became known as the Town Clock Church.
The congregation later became known as St. Luke’s Lutheran Church and eventually left the Bedford Street building. The property subsequently became associated with First Christian Church, and ownership was transferred to Washington First Church in 2016.
Nearby First Baptist Church was erected at 212 Bedford Street in 1849. Together, these two historic churches reflect Cumberland’s rapid growth and religious diversity during the mid-nineteenth century. Within a short distance of one another, Baptist and German-speaking Lutheran congregations established permanent houses of worship on the same Bedford Street hillside at nearly the same time.
To learn more about the neighboring church and its place in Dumbhundred history,
read the HDAC article “First Baptist Church: An 1849 Landmark in Dumbhundred.”
Sources and Further Reading
Maryland Historical Trust
National Register property page for the Town Clock Church
National Register of Historic Places nomination form
Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties record AL-IV-A-102
Western Maryland’s Historical Library
Town Clock Church history and the Albert and Angela Feldstein postcard
Congregational History
German Marylanders — St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, Cumberland
St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Cumberland — Our History
Property and Preservation Records
Maryland Land Records — Record examined: December 28, 2016, document number 0022670166. The website requires a free account.
Maryland Historical Trust — Preservation Easements
Additional History and Photographs
Town Clock Church Historical Marker
Historic Town Clock Church Offered for Sale in 2016
Historical-Date Note
The official St. Luke’s webpage currently gives 1859 as the dedication year for the Bedford Street church. This article uses March 17, 1850, the date reported by Western Maryland’s Historical Library and the earlier congregation history based on Abdel Ross Wentz’s History of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Maryland, 1820–1920.
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