23 Facts About Abraham Gesner

Abraham Gesner was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia and lived much of his life in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Abraham Gesner was noted to be a great reader and a diligent student.

Financially drained, Abraham Gesner returned to the family farm and married Harriet Webster, daughter of prominent Kentville doctor Isaac Webster in 1824.

In 1825, Abraham 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.

Abraham Gesner 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.

Related searches

In 1836, Abraham Gesner published his first book, Remarks on the Geology and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia.

For five years, Abraham Gesner spent his summers on geological fieldwork and his winters classifying specimens and writing reports.

Abraham Gesner's museum was one of its first of its kind in Canada and had 2173 items in its catalogue.

The museum was a financial failure, and when Abraham Gesner left New Brunswick, the Saint John Mechanics' Institute acquired the objects.

In 1842, looking for coal, Abraham Gesner travelled to Quebec, where he discovered the first of the great fossil deposits of the future Miguasha National Park.

Abraham Gesner found that the first product was not satisfactory, as it had an offensive odour, the raw material was expensive to obtain, and his experiments suggested that one ton of Trinidad bitumen would produce only 42 gallons of oil.

Abraham Gesner first called his product "keroselain" from two Greek words, ????? and ?ad?, but later contracted the name to kerosene.

Shortly after Abraham Gesner's father died on October 13,1850, he moved his family to Sackville, a small town near Halifax, and in 1852 to Halifax.

In Halifax, Abraham Gesner made the acquaintance of Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald.

Abraham Gesner attempted to continue the project on his own, but Halifax's city council awarded the gas license to a rival group, the Halifax Gas Company.

The jury, told by the judge that Cairn's license to mine coal included "other mines and minerals, " ultimately sided against Abraham Gesner, resulting in albertite's misidentification as "Albert Coal" for the next 30 years.

Abraham Gesner married Harriet Webster, daughter of prominent Kentville doctor Isaac Webster in 1824.

In 1861, Abraham Gesner published A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum and Other Distilled Oils, which was extremely influential in the future development of the petroleum industry and remarkable for the accuracy of his predictions on the future course the refining business would take.

Abraham Gesner might have helped James Miller Williams in the development of his petroleum refinery in Hamilton in 1861.

In 1863, Abraham Gesner returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was offered the chair of Natural History at Dalhousie University, but he died on April 29,1864, before he could take up the position.

Abraham Gesner was buried in an unmarked grave at Halifax's Camp Hill Cemetery.

In 2007, Abraham Gesner was inducted into the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame for his contributions to the petroleum industry.

In 2016, Abraham Gesner was posthumously awarded the Order of New Brunswick by the province of his longtime residence.