At about the same time that Daniel Boone arrived, Jacob Zumwalt and his extended family settled in the O’Fallon area circa 1798, building a large log home. A few years later, when the War of 1812 set off deadly guerilla raids with Native Americans ambushing and killing American settlers, local families fled to the shelter provided by the Zumwalt’s home, which is said to have been fortified with a stockade fence. A spring, which is now Lake Whetsel, supplied water.

Zumwalt’s Fort, as the fortified house came to be called, was one of 35-plus “settler forts” that once stood in Missouri. Boone’s Fort at present-day Matson, Missouri, was the largest.

The reconstructed Zumwalt’s Fort opened in 2015 as a gift to the City from the O’Fallon Community Foundation. It is the only rebuilt War of 1812 settler fort in the state.

Darius Heald was born in Jacob Zumwalt’s homestead fort on January 27, 1822. His parents, Nathan and Rebekah Heald, had purchased the property from Jacob Zumwalt for $1000 in 1817. Nathan and Rebekah’s three daughters all died before the age of 22 but their only son, Darius, lived in the old Zumwalt cabin for most of his life.

In 1884 at the age of 62, Darius built an imposing brick home near the old homestead Fort which he named “Stony Point.” Laurent Torno Jr., a local architect renowned for historic preservation, described the original house as “German-Italianate-Victorian.” The home is a big farmhouse, “basically German in its severity,” says Torno. Although the Healds were not German immigrants, many builders and craftsmen in the area were.