BOYCE: Daniel Dulany is, uh, was an Irish immigrant who laid out Frederick in 1745.

And the city of Frederick has pretty much bloomed from that original layout.

Dulany encouraged Germans to settle here because they had a reputation of being hard workers.

But in addition to that, the proprietor of Frederick, Lord Baltimore, issued a proclamation to people in Pennsylvania, and that's what encouraged a big flow of Germans out of Pennsylvania to Maryland.

The Brunner family became part of this great German migration in 1736 and settle on this piece of land.

The Brunners, Joseph, and Cathrina named their farm Schifferstadt in references to the town where they had lived in Germany.

They brought a little sense of the old homeland to them here in Frederick.

They had a son named Elias.

He builds the big stone house that is our museum today.

This is the oldest surviving house in Frederick County.

There are a number of features about this house that are distinctively German.

The edge of the roof kicks up a little bit.

It's something that the Germans like.

And the heating system, which was what we call a five-plate stove.

The way the stove is placed, it's used to heat both of these bedrooms.

And it's energy efficient.

It was calculated back in the day that you could heat a house with this kind of system with a quarter or less the amount of wood that was used in the open English-style fireplace.

Visitors who come to the house can learn about life in Colonial America, the way people lived, what it was like inside their homes, how the homes were built.

I do feel some connection to the German history of Frederick, especially when I'm walking around inside the house.

JIM: There's a lot of German heritage here.

My dad was born in Munich, and his family came over when he was two years old.

We started making beer about 15 years ago.

Our main focus is traditional European-style beers.

We have Oktoberfest and Marzen, a Dunkel Weiss, Hefeweizen, Vienna Lager, and then our biggest-selling beer is the Kolsch.

We are in the Historic District of Frederick, and this is a historic building.

It was built in the late 1800s.

It's also right along Carroll Creek, so we get a lot of people that are just walking along the creek and then they also come in and have a beer.

German culture is definitely very much alive in Frederick.

There are a lot of activities, specifically Oktoberfest in late September and early October, German-style beer, and of course German music.

So there's clearly a big German influence here in Frederick.

And even to this day, there's a lot of German American people that still live here.