Early life Abraham Pineo Gesner was born on May 2, 1797, at Chipmans Corner,
Cornwallis Township, just north of
Kentville,
Nova Scotia. He was one of 12 children raised by Henry Gesner and Sarah Pineo. His father was a
Loyalist, who emigrated to Nova Scotia after the
American Revolution. Gesner was noted to be a great reader and a diligent student. In his early twenties, Gesner began a venture selling horses to plantations in the
Caribbean and the United States, but this enterprise failed after he lost most of his horses in two shipwrecks. In 1825, Gesner travelled to
London to study medicine at
St Bartholomew's Hospital under
Sir Astley Paston Cooper, and surgery at
Guy's Hospital under
John Abernethy. While primarily a medical student, Gesner developed an interest in the earth sciences and took lectures in mineralogy and geology. Gesner also continued to pursue his passion for geology, reading the writings of notable geologists and developing a habit of picking up mineral specimens that caught his attention while making his rounds on horseback. For five years, Gesner spent his summers on geological fieldwork and his winters classifying specimens and writing reports. Following the publication of Gesner's geological surveys, local entrepreneurs opened coal and iron mines in
Queens County and were quickly disappointed by the extent and quality of the ore. Unhappy investors questioned the validity of Gesner's surveys and the provincial government terminated his employment in 1843. While in
Saint John, Gesner amassed an extensive collection of minerals and wildlife specimens, which he assembled into a museum in 1842. The museum was a financial failure, and when Gesner left New Brunswick, the Saint John Mechanics’ Institute acquired the objects. Following the termination of his geological appointment in 1843, Gesner returned to his family homestead at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, in order to be with his father who was then 87 years old. While working on the family farm, Gesner also continued to practice medicine, write books, give public lectures and conduct experiments. Switching his experiments from Trinidad's bitumen to albertite, Gesner found that the burning oil extracted from the substance produced a brighter and cleaner flame compared to lamps using
whale oil or
coal oil. While undertaking a series of public lectures in
Charlottetown, Gesner reportedly gave the first public demonstration of the preparation and use of the new lamp fuel in August 1846. Gesner first called his product "keroselain" from two Greek words, κηρός (wax) and λάδι (oil), but later contracted the name to
kerosene. However, Cochrane's terms of service expired in April 1851, and he returned to England before the pair could bring the project to fruition. The trial centered on whether the albertite deposit was coal or asphalt. In early 1853, following the outcome of the trial, Gesner and his family moved to New York City, where he had earlier exhibited his kerosene and amassed significant publicity. In March 1853, Gesner partnered with
shipbroker Horatio Eagle, who issued an eight-page circular entitled,
Project for the Formation of a Company to Work the Combined Patent Rights of Dr. Abraham Gesner, Nova Scotia, and the Right Hon. the Earl of Dundonald of Middlesex, England. The pamphlet offered for sale $100,000 in shares of a new company called the Asphalt Mining and Kerosene Company, later renamed the North American Kerosene Company. On June 27, 1854, Gesner obtained U.S
patents 11,203, 11,204, and 11,205 for "Improvement in kerosene burning fluids," but he transferred patent rights to the North American Kerosene Company. In the patents, Gesner described three distinct types of kerosene, which he labelled kerosenes A, B and C. By 1856, the firm was selling kerosene for use as lamp fuel. While the enterprise had not made Gesner extremely wealthy, he lived comfortably in Brooklyn, New York, where he was a prominent figure in the local church and community. In response to the increased competition, the North American Kerosene Company published a pamphlet on March 28, 1859, that advised customers that kerosene is their registered trademark and that oils made by others can not use the name. One prominent rival manufacturer, Samuel Downer of Boston, Massachusetts, made an agreement in early 1859 to license the name and Gesner's refinement process. Although Young only began his distillation experiments in 1848, two years after Gesner's first public demonstration of Kerosene, he was first to file an American patent for his process in 1852. Thereafter, the North American Kerosene Company had to pay royalties to Young. Sometime after the trial, the company replaced Gesner with
Luther Atwood as chief chemist.
Later life and death For a time, Gesner remained in New York, practising medicine and continuing his research into hydrocarbons. Gesner was humble about his contribution to the development of the petroleum industry, writing in
A Practical Treatise on Coal that "The progress of discovery in this case, as in others, has been slow and gradual. It has been carried on by the labors, not of one mind, but of many, so as to render it difficult to discover to whom the greatest credit is due." After the publication of
A Practical Treatise on Coal, Gesner became a distillation consultant, visiting the oil fields in
Enniskillen Township sometime around 1860. Gesner might have helped
James Miller Williams in the development of his petroleum refinery in
Hamilton in 1861. ==Legacy==