Flint

Flint, at the junction of Farm roads 2868, 346, and 2493, four miles north of Bullard in Smith County, was originally part of the Tom?s Quevedo survey. The site, named for local landowner Robert P. Flynt, became a stop on the Kansas and Gulf Short Line Railroad in 1882. The post office began operations in 1887 as Flint, when postmaster Charles B. Brown misspelled the name on application forms. Robert Flynt succeeded him the next year. In 1890 the settlement had a general store, three cotton gins, a physician, and a population of twenty-five. In 1892 the Etna Methodist Church was moved there. By 1902 some 100 local families were engaged in truck farming. That year they shipped eighty-five railroad cars of tomatoes, as well as large amounts of cabbage, cantaloupes, and peaches. The town supported a blacksmith shop, a telephone exchange, a telegraph service, and the C. B. Rather and A. M. Campbell mercantile companies. The local gin and gristmill shipped 750 to 1,000 bales of cotton each year. Flint also had Methodist and Baptist churches. Records for 1903 showed two schools, one with three teachers and 147 white students and the other with two teachers and eighty-one black students.