• To arrange a tour of our beautiful and historic building and tunnels below, please email [email protected].  We ask that you allow up to 3 days for one of our volunteer docents to respond.  We look forward to hosting you and your group.

  • Watch our weekly videos of Sermons, Gospel Lessons, Comforting Words, and Music on our YouTube page.

    (Click on our YouTube page link below)
  • Gracious and loving God, we thank you for sending your life-giving Spirit to dwell with us in the community of Emmanuel Parish; infuse us with passion for worship of you, and for service to the greater community of Cumberland and beyond. Give us wisdom and perseverance in being a mutually supportive, inviting and inclusive congregation; and help us in all things to follow the example of him whom we call “God with us,” even Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

    Amen

The New Church

In the administration of Thomas Jefferson, the first United States highway was begun for the opening of the west.  Called the National Road, it started at the base of the hill on which Emmanuel stands and eventually ran to Vandalia, IL (then the State Capital). In the early 19th Century, then, Cumberland was the jumping off place for countless Conestoga wagon trains heading off to settle Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and beyond. By the 1840’s, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, begun along the Potomac at Georgetown, had reached it’s terminus. So had the first railroad west, the Baltimore and Ohio that ran from Baltimore to Cumberland. Cumberland was a boomtown, literally the transportation hub of the Northeast United States.

By the 1840’s, the little Emmanuel Church was way too small for the congregation. The Rector at the time was one David Hillhouse Buel, a man of vision and sophisticated taste. Through him the congregation hired John Notman of Philadelphia to design a new house of worship. A leading figure in what was then avant-garde, Notman took plans from Medieval English Gothic and converted them into the Church we know today.

The cornerstone was laid Ascension Day, 1849, and the Church was consecrated on October 16th, 1851 – 48 years to the day after the formal incorporation of Emmanuel Parish.

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