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The village of Schaumburg was incorporated on March 7, 1956, but the heritage of Schaumburg dates back to much earlier times when the first inhabitants of the area were members of the Sauk, Fox, Potawatomi, and Kickapoo Native American tribes. By the mid-19th century, settlers first began to arrive from Bonn, Germany and the eastern United States. Many of the Germans came from Schaumburg-Lippe, a small princely state now in Lower Saxony.

Legend has it that one of the earliest settlers was Trumball Kent from Oswego, New York. Kent, a “Yankee”, as settlers from New England were called in the west, farmed property in the northeast corner of the township. Another Yankee was Horace Williams, who owned substantial lands but lived in the hamlet of Palatine in Palatine Township. Ernst Schween settled in 1835 not far from what used to be called Olde Schaumburg Centre, in what was then and is now known as Sarah’s Grove. Another early settler in Schaumburg Township was German-born Johann Sunderlage. According to one legend, Sunderlage was a member of a survey team that divided Cook County into townships around 1833; according to another legend, he worked on a survey team on the Joliet canal. He liked the area so much that, upon completion of the project, he returned to Europe and brought his family and friends from Germany and settled in the area now known as Hoffman Estates in Schaumburg Township around 1836. His home still stands in its original location.

Sunderlage and his family occupied their land in the township until the federal land sale of 1842 allowed them to buy the property and obtain the deed. Sunderlage and Kent represented the predominant groups that settled Schaumburg Township in its early days. In 1840, 56 percent of the township households originated from the eastern United States, while 28 percent were German-born. By the 1850s, the population mix had changed to 28 percent “Yankee” and 48 percent German.