A spark from the black dirt

Henry Wisner was a worried man. The Florida, NY, native was serving in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. As talk of revolution brewed, he became acutely aware that the Colonies were short on basic military supplies.

Not enough gunpowder. Or lead for bullets. Or gun flints, which in this age of the flintlock rifle were critical. Wisner himself had built several gunpowder mills back in New York to address the powder shortage.

Lead was either being scavenged or mined. But gun flints? They had mostly been imported from Europe via England, which was a big problem. Because it was July 4, 1776, and Wisner and his fellow legislators had just declared independence from Great Britain.

Wisner was 56, born and raised on the edge of the Wallkill River Drowned Lands – what we call the Pine Island black dirt country – and a prosperous farmer and miller. He had served in the New York Assembly and on a commission to drain the Drowned Lands. He was a guy with connections; now he needed to use them.

A big connection was his brother-in-law, Joseph Barton, who had married his sister Anne. Barton was a Sussex County guy, a farmer near Newton. He was the agent for the East Jersey Proprietors, and as such both landlord and realtor to large swaths of the county. He was related to Vernon’s Hinchman and Rickey families. If you needed info on somebody or something in Sussex County, Barton was your go-to guy.

And so Wisner wrote him: did he have any leads on sources of gunpowder, lead or flints?

The first two were a no-go, replied Barton, writing back on July 9, 1776. But flints? Noted Barton, “one Island in the drowned lands near Jacobus Decker’s, called Flint Island, could supply all of Europe with gun-flints, besides our own.”

“Jacobus Decker’s” was Deckertown, now Sussex Borough, which Flint Island was a few miles from. Henry Wisner subsequently supplied the Continental Army with both gunpowder and gun flints, so we can presume he procured flint (technically it’s chert) from Flint Island.

Within months, both men found themselves subsumed in the war – but tragically, not on the same side. While Wisner had always been an outspoken supporter of independence, his brother-in-law Barton had been on the fence. When the real shooting started, Barton sided with King George.

In April 1777, Barton evacuated his family to British-held Staten Island and went off to fight as a Colonel in the 9th Battalion New Jersey Loyalist Volunteers. He was captured and sent to prison in Connecticut in August, 1777. While in prison, his wife and two of his children died of smallpox.

Compounding Barton’s problems, while in prison his personal papers were confiscated and burned, making later compensation claims for his losses nearly impossible. The officer responsible? None other than Benedict Arnold, the notorious traitor who ironically ended up on the same side as Barton.

After the Revolution, Barton ended up in Nova Scotia, where he founded the town of Barton, in Digby County. He died there in 1788.

Wisner suffered in the war, too, his son Gabriel dying at the Battle of Minisink. Henry Wisner died in 1790. When you drive up Route 17 and get near Middletown and the Galleria Mall exit, you will see the old Wallkill Cemetery up on the hill to your left; he’s buried up there.

And what of Flint Island? Its name was forgotten, and it was mostly forgotten too. It was only when researchers came upon Barton’s 1776 letter to Wisner, now in the archives of Northern Illinois University, that people wondered where the island was. In the early 1990s, archaeologist Ed Lenik of Wayne investigated. With the help of local researchers, a clear candidate was identified: a remote, rocky hill along the Wallkill River.

Here, the Kittatinny Limestone is periodically interspersed with thick bands of blue-gray chert, just the kind Barton mentions. With some bands eight or ten inches thick, it was a goldmine of flint. And not just for the Colonists: archaeological research suggests that the site was quarried by Native Americans as a source for their stone tools going back thousands of years.

Today, Flint Island’s rocky, forested slopes are frequented only by wildlife, the only sound the cry of a hawk or the murmur of the nearby Wallkill in the heart of the refuge. You would never know the spot helped spark – quite literally – American independence.