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Abraham Gesner -
A Father of Petroleum
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[Editor's Note: While not exactly a lapidary topic, this piece is a glimpse into a curious corner of
geological history, and Hans Durstling is working on a biography of Gesner.]
One of the most intriguing of Canada's early scientists is the little known Abraham Gesner, who, in North America, is credited with the invention of kerosene. Here, in Canada's Maritime Provinces, where Gesner lived and worked, he is regarded as "A Great
Man", a kind of recently discovered hero of local history. But, as far as can be puzzled together from extremely scarce original sources, while he seems to have been eminently likeable to his friends, he was also obnoxious to his opponents (of whom he
acquired many) and, weighing all things together, decidely his own worst enemy.
Abraham Gesner (1797 - 1864) was born in Cornwallis Nova Scotia, on the Bay of Fundy. His father Henry, and his father's twin brother had fled to the British across the frozen Hudson River at the age of 16 during the American Revolutionary War and were
subsequently granted land in Nova Scotia.
Unsuccessful in youthful business ventures, Abraham appears to have been rescued by his father-in-law, a prominent Nova Scotia physician, from a type of debtor's house-arrest, and packed off to study medicine in Britain.
Here he fell in love with geology and made the acquaintance of Charles Lyell among others. In 1826 he returned to Nova Scotia and settled in Parrsboro on the Bay of Fundy to practise medicine for money and geology for love.
Gesture of Contempt?
In that same year Charles T. Jackson (who later also studied medicine in Europe) and his friend Francis Alger Junior, both of Boston, chartered a schooner out of Saint John New Brunswick to go geologizing along the Bay of Fundy - right in Gesner's chosen
territory. Their report of these excursions, published in 1831 as "Remarks on the Mineralogy and Geology of Nova Scotia" gained considerable public success. In a fashion that academics today can readily identify with, Jackson and Alger in effect
"robbed" Gesner of his subject. Gesner's response (if response it was) was not of a kind to smooth things over, for in 1833 he published his own "Remarks on the Geology and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia," merely inverting their title and covering almost
identical ground. Not surprisingly, Jackson accused Gesner of plagiarism. If this was a gesture of contempt, Gesner paid dearly for it later.
But Gesner's Nova Scotia report was likewise a public success, and on the strength of this he was engaged to undertake a four year geological survey (1838-42) of the Province of New Brunswick, the first such in British posessions outside the mother
country. He may not have been paid for his last year's work.
Probably unpaid and chronically impecunious in any case, he opened (1842) Gesner's Museum, a private museum of science in Saint John New Brunswick. It was the first museum of science of any kind, public or private, in British North America. Here, for a
modest admission, he exhibited the many artefacts collected in the course of his Survey. Again to no financial success. A group of friends bought his collection, more or less as a charity, and turned it over to the Saint John Mechanics Institute. From
this in turn it passed on to become the nucleus of the collections of the New Brunswick Museum.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the Geological Frontier
Gesner then moved back to Nova Scotia where he wrote and worked as a geological consultant. In his assessment reports he frequently, almost viciously, digresses to disparage "Yankee capitalists" who in his view came into the British Provinces only to
exploit their resources while ensuring that the profits went all to themselves. Often in Nova Scotia at the same time, and usually examining properties for just such "Yankee" mining interests was none other than Charles T. Jackson. Jackson's geological
reports strangely mirror Gesner's, being peppered with comments to the effect that if only these torpid colonials would bestir themselves and show a New England spirit of initiative, why then, someday, even they might flourish.
It was during the Halifax period that Gesner made the acqaintance of another key figure in his life, Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald, a naval hero and genius second only to Nelson. Years before, Dundonald had laid a charge of
cowardice before the enemy against his own superiors in the British Navy which gained him years of disgrace, even voluntary exile. Near the end of his life at last rehabilitated and sent off to command the naval forces out of Halifax, the impetuous and
intractable Dundonald is, significantly, described by Gesner in one letter as "my best friend".
Dundonald's family held land in Trinidad. His father appear to have bankrupted the family with experiments in gas lighting on the basis of Trinidad pitch. Yet there was sense of a sort here, for in the 1840's, thanks partly to the ruthless efficiency of
the New England whaling fleet, whale oil, the illuminant of choice, was becoming increasingly scarce and costly. Thus it may well have been at the suggestion of Dundonald that
Gesner began to work on lighting. In 1846, in a lecture on Prince Edward Island, Gesner first publicly displayed a new bright burning illuminant he had distilled from Trinidad pitch and baptised "keroselene," soon shortened to "kerosene". It is not clear
whether at this time the "kerosene" was in gas or liquid form. Probabilities point strongly to the former.
Finding Trinidad pitch an unsatisfactory raw material, Gesner then turned to distilling a black bitumenous "mineral" he had found among the stream sediment in the Frederick Brook, in Albert County, New Brunswick, in the course of his Geological Survey
(and possibly even before that). He named it "Albertite" and with its exceptionally high content of gas and light hydrocarbons it was just about ideal for his purpose.
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Copyright, 1997 by Hans Durstling
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Hans Durstling is a freelance writer, jewellery maker and stone cutter living in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, near the zeolite, agate and amethyst collecting areas on the Bay of Fundy. His stories, reviews and commentaries have appeared in Canadian
Geographic Magazine, The European, Toronto Globe & Mail, Canadian Mineralogist, Mineralienwelt, Rock & Gem and many others. He now works primarily in corporate & industrial writing explaining complex scientific and technical products and processes to
layman readers, and writing & narrating corporate & technical videos. A considerable portion of his time is taken up with the constant battle to keep minerals and gems ("the hobby that got out of control") from taking over entirely.
Hans can be reached at sinico@nbnet.nb.ca.
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