O'Fallon Community Foundation

The dream of seeing Jacob Zumwalt’s Fort rebuilt has a long history of its own—much longer than we sometimes like to admit. Long before the Fort crumbled to an unrecognizable shape, local historians were pleading for its restoration.

Miss Marcia Williams, whose family purchased and lived in the former Woodlawn Seminary following the cyclone of 1915, was the Fort’s first known local advocate. Interestingly, however, in an early article that appeared on the fort, she credits Rose Lane Wilder with being the first to suggest its restoration. The daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose was a writer herself, best known for her early biography of Jack London. We have no way of knowing what happened for Miss Marcia (as she was known by all in O’Fallon) to give Miss Wilder this credit, but considering her passion for the West and her fierce libertarian views, (Miss Wilder rejected her social security checks as a form of socialism) it’s not difficult to imagine that she just might have been a fan of our own Jacob Zumwalt.

Acording to Jerry Varner, the park’s superintendent in 1974, Rudolph Goebel (1835-1923) took the well-known photograph of the fort with Darius Heald sitting on a log. Goebel, whose studio was in St. Charles, took frequent excursions through rural areas of the county to photograph points of interest. At the time that picture was taken, reportedly in 1888, Darius had already built his new home, Stony Point, and the Fort was occupied by one of Darius’ hired hands. In 1889, Darius is said to have put a new roof on the fort himself, though he was 67 years old at the time. Photo left (click to enlarge) Rudolph Goebel’s photograph of Zumwalt’s Fort with Darius Heald and family.

Upon Darius’ death in 1904, Edmonia Heald McCluer and husband Tom inherited the property. The Rebekah Wells Heald Chapter of the Daughters of 1812, named for Darius’ mother who had purchased the Zumwalt property in 1817 with her husband Samuel Wells, was formed in 1909. The McCluer’s gave them permission to use the Fort for their meetings, a practice that continued until 1918.Photo right (click to enlarge) The interior of Zumwalt’s Fort on the occasion of the 1909 founding of the O’Fallon Chapter of the Daughters of 1812.

In the fall of 1916, Fred and Ida Gentemann purchased the 80-acre property (at a price of $100/acre) from the McCluer’s. When Raleigh Jessup interviewed the Gentemann’s in 1974, Ida said that the fort at the time looked like it did in the famed “burned tree” photo.  Photo left (click to enlarge) Dr. Milo Quaife who wrote the history of the Fort Dearborn Massacre purportedly took the “burned tree” photo of Zumwalt’s Fort in 1912.

Ida described the fort as being in “fair condition” when they owned the property. The springhouse still stood below and the hillside surrounding the fort was “covered with big locust trees” and “was a beautiful sight in May.” In the interview, Ida also mentions that the date 1798 was carved in one of the mantels in the fort. We can only take Ida’s word for that and regret the loss of the walnut mantel since that would be one more piece of anecdotal evidence of the date at which Jacob Zumwalt first settled on this land.

Fred Gentemann owned the Gentemann Lumber and Supply Company at the time and built the wooden stave silo on the west end of the fort. They used the fort itself as an animal shed and for feed storage. In 1919, they sold Stony Point to a Mr. and Mrs. Fred Albers of Kansas. Photo right (click to enlarge)

In the years following, the property had several owners and a variety of tenants in the Darius Heald home, some of them hired by the state as caretakers for the park. Despite Miss Marsha’s efforts to get the fort reconstructed, it continued in a downward spiral of decline. Miss Marsha was, admittedly, a rather eccentric woman who didn’t let facts dampen her zeal for romantic historical tales and we will never know to what degree the tales she handed down regarding ghosts, Zumwalt premonitions, and the legendary Black Hawk were founded on truth. Perhaps for that reason, her petitions on behalf of the fort were never taken seriously. 

 In the ensuing years, an adversarial relationship continued between the State of Missouri and the City of O’Fallon concerning the disposition and use of the park. Remaining pieces of the fort dwindled away gradually and by the mid 1970s, nothing was left but the chimney. By then, Raleigh Jessup had begun his campaign to get the fort restored, a cause for which he has worked tirelessly ever since. When the O’Fallon Historical Society moved and restored another log cabin in Civic Park as their Bicentennial project, Raleigh and then mayor Del Peters clandestinely claimed the last of Jacob’s white oak logs and placed one as a mantel in the log cabin museum. Raleigh then used the remnants to carve the model of Zumwalt’s Fort that has educated and enthralled hundreds of school children who have been lucky enough to listen to Raleigh tell them the story of Jacob Zumwalt and his homestead fort.

This photo (left, click to enlarge) was taken c1926. The east pen and chimney have been gone since around 1917. According to one source, the remaining structure was being used as a corncrib.

  Taken about 1936 (right, click to enlarge), only the westernmost cabin remains in this photo. One story that’s been handed down is of a bootlegger who rented the property about this time and used some of the remaining logs to fire his still. This is just one more story about Jacob Zumwalt’s homestead fort that we will never be able to confirm.

According to Jerry Varner, by the time the state purchased the park in 1938, the roof was gone and “a few of the log walls were jerked out.” The state’s plan was to rebuild the fort when they bought it but WWII got in the way and the funding disappeared. The chimney was repaired in the early 1970s, and has remained the sole remnant, awaiting the day when the fort could finally be reconstructed (bottom left &right photos, click to enlarge).