Finns Point

Finns Point is a small strategic promontory at the southwest corner of the New Jersey peninsula, on the east bank of the Delaware River near its mouth on Delaware Bay. Due to a geographic curiosity, most of it is located in Salem County, New Jersey though part of it lies in New Castle County, Delaware, approximately 10 mi (16 km) south of Wilmington, Delaware, and about 5 mi (8 km) northwest of the mouth of the Salem River on the New Jersey bank of the Delaware. Pea Patch Island, part of the state of Delaware, sits in the channel of the river facing the promontory.

The promontory was probably named after early Finnish settlers in the New Sweden colony in the early 17th century. According to historical records, settlers began crossing the Delaware from Fort Christina to the east bank of the Delaware as early as 1638. In the 1670s the area became settled by English colonists from the New Haven Colony as part of Fenwicks Colony.

The promontory is the location of Finns Point National Cemetery, a military cemetery used in the American Civil War for Union and Confederate soldiers who died while at Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island. It was also the location of Fort Mott, constructed after the Civil War and used up through World War I to protect the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company facilities upriver at Carneys Point Township, New Jersey, as well as the port of Philadelphia. The fort is now part of Fort Mott State Park.

External links

* [http://www.genealogia.fi/place/placenje.htm Finnish place name origins]
* [http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/index?section=news&id=4874173 Channel 6 Action News (Philadelphia) Special Report on Finns Point]
* [http://www.users.voicenet.com/~hsimmons/Finn%27s%20Point%20Website/FinnsPointHomePage.htm Finns Point National Cemetery]
* [http://www.gettysburgtourguides.org/Dispatch/ftmott.html Fort Mott]