Abraham Gesner

Geologist

• Born: May 2, 1797
• Birthplace: Cornwallis Township, Nova Scotia
• Died: April 29, 1864
• Place of death: Halifax, Nova Scotia

Contribution: Abraham Gesner was a Canadian physician, geologist, and inventor. He is best known for inventing a process for manufacturing kerosene, a breakthrough at a time when homes and businesses were fueled by fat, camphene, or whale oil. His patent later helped form the North American Gas Light Company, which was the foundation of Imperial Oil, one of Canada’s largest corporations in the early twenty-first century.

Early Life and Education

Abraham Gesner was born on May 2, 1797, in Cornwallis Township, Nova Scotia. He was the third son of Colonel Henry Gesner and Sarah Pineo. He received a traditional rural schooling in reading, writing, and mathematics and spent much of his free time as a child collecting and examining rocks and fossils along the shore of the Bay of Fundy. When he was twenty-one, he began shipping horses from Nova Scotia to the West Indies; after being shipwrecked twice, he decided to look for a less risky method of earning a living.

Gesner married Harriet Webster, daughter of a physician, and they had seven sons and three daughters. Shortly after the marriage, Gesner’s new father-in-law helped pay for Gesner’s medical training at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, England. While in England, Gesner also became deeply interested in geology. When he returned to Nova Scotia, he chose to live in Parrsboro, a site known for its interesting geology and fossils. As he traveled around the area visiting patients, he often stopped to collect geological specimens. He wrote a treatise on the geology of the region and in 1838 was appointed provincial geologist of New Brunswick. He was hired by the provincial government to conduct a geological survey with a particular focus on coal deposits.

Geological Explorations

In 1838, Gesner moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where he continued his geological work and wrote annual reports of his explorations. He noted that coal could often be found where certain fossils were located. Although his work contained some errors—the result of both his incomplete education in geology and the incomplete state of the science at the time—it provided a basis for the endeavors of subsequent geologists. By 1842, Gesner was having difficulty finding financial backers for his expeditions and had borrowed heavily from friends; he soon went deeply into debt.

During his expeditions, Gesner amassed quite a collection of mineral samples, animal specimens, and artifacts created by the local indigenous population. He used these items to open a museum, hoping to make enough money to offset his debt by charging admission to view his private collection. The museum was a financial failure, and the specimens eventually ended up at the New Brunswick Museum.

Gesner eventually moved back to Cornwallis Township, to the farm that had formerly belonged to his father. Although he ran the farm and worked as a doctor, he was far more interested in other things, chiefly electricity, the understanding of which was rudimentary at best at the time. He conducted various electrical experiments and created electric motors and generators as well as a machine that wound insulation around electrical wire.

Distillation of Kerosene

In the mid-1840s, Gesner became interested in oil and its byproducts and began distilling various substances from pitch, or a type of asphalt called Albertite. He obtained samples of these from a deposit in the West Indies. One of his products was a lamp oil. At the time, fat, camphene, and whale oil were used in lamps. Gesner’s oil was easier to obtain and use. In 1846, he gave a series of lectures on scientific topics and demonstrated the use of his new oil, a great novelty at the time. Meanwhile, he wrote books about Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick that were intended to educate new settlers about the places in which they were living.

In 1848, Gesner gave up farming and eventually moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In Halifax, he met Thomas Cochrane, who now owned the West Indies pitch deposit, and Cochrane encouraged him to continue his experiments. The main problem, however, was finding raw material—although the West Indies deposit was plentiful, the expense of using it, as well as Gesner’s experiences with shipwrecks, led him to look for a closer source. He found one in New Brunswick but became embroiled in a dispute with William Cairns, who owned a coal mining lease on the area. The two argued about whether the substance Gesner was mining was coal or asphaltum. If it was coal, Gesner could not mine in the area; if it was asphaltum (or asphalt), Cairn’s lease technically did not cover it, and Gesner could continue his operations. Two trials were held, resulting in judgments in favor of Cairns that stated that his lease covered coal “and other minerals.”

Meanwhile, in 1850, Gesner gave his new lamp oil a name: kerosene (after the Greek word keroselaion, meaning wax oil). In 1853, he moved to the United States, where he was able to secure financial backing for his kerosene patent, and the North American Gas Light Company was born. The company did well until another chemist, James Young, distilled what he called “paraffin oil,” which he patented two years prior to Gesner. The new oil competed with Gesner’s, and Young sued Gesner for patent infringement and won. Gesner’s company had to pay royalties to Young, a huge financial burden.

Gesner suffered further in 1859, when refineries in Pennsylvania and Canada began producing large quantities of petroleum. It was far easier to produce kerosene from petroleum than from Albertite, and factories churned it out at a fraction of the cost that Gesner’s group charged. Gesner lost his job with the company, which continued to produce kerosene, using petroleum as a source.

Gesner wrote a book titled A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum, and Other Distillates, the first textbook on petroleum refining. He moved back to Halifax in 1863 and was appointed professor of natural history at Dalhousie University. Gesner died in Halifax on April 29, 1864.

Bibliography

“Abraham Gesner.” Fossils of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia Museum, n.d. Web. 26 June 2013.

Marrin, Albert. Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives. New York: Random, 2012. Print.

Martin, Gwen. Gesner’s Dream: The Trials and Triumphs of Early Mining in New Brunswick. Fredericton: Canadian Inst. of Mining, 2003. Print.

Mitcham, Allison. Prophet of the Wilderness: Abraham Gesner. Hantsport: Lancelot, 1995. Print.

Russell, Loris S. “Gesner, Abraham.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. U of Toronto/U Laval, 2013. Web. 26 June 2013.