Glandorf, known as “Little Germany,” was founded in America in 1834 by settlers from the area of Glandorf, Niedersachen, Germany, under the leadership of the Rev. Johann Wilhelm Horstmann, as part of the largest ethnic immigration to America from 1820 until 1910, nearly five-and-a-half million people. This tract of land soon became the center of the community. A number of wooden churches served the growing congregation, and following the death of Fr. Horstmann in 1843, his former student and pastor, the Rev. George Boehne, began construction in 1846 of a 90 x 50 foot brick structure with three altars and a bell tower, located in the northeast corner of the property. Prior to 1900 all burials were in the area of these early churches. The 1846 structure served the congregation until 1878, when the current gothic church was completed. Later, Fr. Horstmann’s remains were re-interred within the white marble monument marking the site of the main altar of the previous churches. By the 1950's the early gravestones had fallen to ruin, and many had been removed to the rear of the property, resulting in an unkempt appearance. In August 1954, as a tribute to the early pioneers, the Rev. Otto Brockman, C.PP.S., proposed the erection of a shrine honoring the pioneers and the mother of god under the title “Mother of Grace.” Norbert Sager, William Gulker, and Leo Ellerbrock fashioned the shrine using the early monuments. The complex stands as a tribute to the Glandorf pioneers who, while enduring unknown hardships, planted the Roman Catholic faith in the wilderness of northwestern Ohio. By an act of Congress in 1976, this area, the church, the rectory, and the former convent were declared a national historic site, the first so honored in the Nineteen-County Diocese of Toledo.