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Dr. Gesner's Kerosene: The Start of American Oil Refining

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Kendall Beaton
Kendall Beaton
Affiliation:
Shell Oil Company
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Abstract

Accounts of the “birth of the petroleum industry” traditionally have emphasized the discovery and exploitation of early oil fields. Equally important, however, was the growth of a market for the production of those fields. Little information has hitherto been available about Dr. Abraham Gesner and his Kerosene Works. Here was one of the significant origin points for a major industrial development. Gesner's story, interesting in itself, contributes greatly to an understanding of all phases of the early petroleum industry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1955 , pp. 28 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1955

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References

1 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, Vol. 42 (New York, 1860), 245–6Google Scholar.

2 24 Aug. 1859.

3 Perfected in the 1780's by the Swiss physician and chemist, Aimé Argand (d. 1803).

4 Merrill's, Joshua Reminiscences in The Derrick's Hand-Book of Petroleum (Oil City, Pa., 1898), I, 880–90Google Scholar; bills of sale in the Bella C. Landauer Collection, New-York Historical Society.

5 Robins, F. W., The Story of the Lamp (and the Candle), (London, 1939), p. 110.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.

7 Biographical material chiefly from Gesner, Anthon Temple, The Gesner Family of New York and Nova Scotia (Middletown, Conn., 1912), p. 12 ffGoogle Scholar; Gesner, G. W., “Dr. Abraham Gesner, A Biographical Sketch,” Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, XIV (1896), 3–11Google Scholar; Matthew, G. F., “Abraham Gesner, A Review of His Scientific Work,” Bulletin, N.H.S.N.B., XV (1897), 3–48Google Scholar.

8 Gesner's great-grandfather, Johan Hendrick Gesner (1679-1745), had come to New York from the Palatinate of Germany in June, 1710, and had settled near Tappan, New York. Johan Gesner (whose middle name was probably spelled Heinrich originally) was one of the thousands of starving Palatines who had made their way to England and to the British Colonies as a result of the generous invitation of Queen Anne. O'Callaghan, E. B., Documentary History of New York (Albany, 1850), III, 563Google Scholar, presents “A List of the Palatines Remaining at New York, 1710,” some 420 of them supported from November, 1710, to June, 1711, at public expense (p. 568). On the list is Johan Henrich “Gossinger,” 31, his wife and two-year-old daughter. (Anthon T. Gesner's Genealogy [1912] confirms that Gesner is meant.) Abraham's grandfather, John Henry Gesner (1724-1811), lived and died near Tappan, and Abraham's father, Henry Gesner (1756-1850), was born there. Henry Gesner, a young man of 19 at the outbreak of the American Revolution, enlisted with his twin brother in the King's Orange Rangers (a Loyalist corps from Orange County, New York), which was quartered in Nova Scotia from the time of Saratoga to the end of the war. The British government rewarded the Gesner brothers with grants of land in Nova Scotia. Henry's allotment had been a 400-acre tract in the Comwallis Valley, where he settled in 1786 and married Sarah Pineo, a young lady of Huguenot and Pilgrim stock, from Providence, Rhode Island, who was like himself a fugitive from the fortunes of war.

9 Quotations are from G. W. Gesner, loc. cit.

10 “The first [geological survey] undertaken by a provincial government in Canada; or, so far as I know, in any British colony” — President's Annual Address, Bulletin, N.H.S.N.B., IX (1890), 34.Google Scholar

11 During his residence at Saint John, Dr. Gesner amassed a large collection of geological specimens and native animals, which he stuffed and mounted himself. This collection became in 1842 the Gesner Museum, and was later (1889) incorporated into the collections of the New Brunswick Natural History Society, now the New Brunswick Museum, of Saint John. It was also during this period that Dr. Gesner was elected a fellow of the Royal Geological Society of London.

12 Abraham Gesner, M.D., A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum and other Distilled Oils (New York, 1861), p. 74Google Scholar.

13 Gesner, op. cit., pp. 26-27.

14 Ibid.

15 It tended to melt and consolidate in a ship's hold “in such a manner as to require mining before it can be discharged.” (Ibid.) Naturally ship captains were loath to carry such a cargo.

16 Gesner, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

17 Matthew, loc. cit., p. 48.

18 G. W. Gesner, loc. cit.

19 Dundonald (1775-1860) is a hero that Kenneth Roberts has overlooked. His dashing bravery gained him command of a war vessel by 25; his fame, election to parliament; his continued gallantry was rewarded by the Order of the Bath (1809), and command of the British flagship for the coast of America (1813). Financial speculations upon the London Stock Exchange (1814) brought him disgrace, court martial, separation from the service, fine and imprisonment. He led a filibuster's life from 1817-32, commanding the Chilean Navy during that country's successful revolt against Spain, heading the Brazilian fleet, and finally serving with the Greek Navy during their wars against the Turks, distinguishing himself always by feats of signal daring. Lord Byron, another veteran of the Greek campaign, is supposed to have patterned his “Don Juan” on Dundonald. In 1832, Dundonald was vindicated and restored to the British Navy and later (1847) to his former place in the Order of the Bath. From 1848 to 1851, he commanded the British Navy in North America and the West Indies. He died on 30 Oct. 1860 in his 85th year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey — “after a thousand hairbreadth escapes from death on sea and land, lived long beyond the common age of man.” See his Autobiography of a Seaman (London, 2 vols., 1860 1861)Google Scholar; The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., by Thomas, , 11th Earl of Dundonald and Foxbourne, H. R. (London, 2 vols., 1869)Google Scholar; and obituary in Scientific American, 24 Nov. 1860, which is source of quotation in previous sentence. Fate played a dirty trick on Dundonald's memory. E. A. Sothern, the actor, had known him in Halifax and from this acquaintance created his famous character, Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin. The role was considerably embellished over the years and became for American audiences the embodiment of the titled British fop. Sothern and his son, E. H. Sothern, played Dundreary with great success for more than a half century. (Sullivan, Mark, Our Times [New York, 1930], III, 562–3)Google Scholar.

20 British patent No. 1291 (1781).

21 Life by his son, II, 307 ff.

22 Frontispiece of Brief Extracts from the Memoranda of the Earl of Dundonald, on the Use, Properties, and Products of the Bitumen and Petroleum of Trinidad (London, 1857), 14 pp. + 8 platesGoogle Scholar. Dundonald occupied the balance of his life with unsuccessful attempts to interest British investors in his patents and holdings in Trinidad.

23 A. Gesner, op. cit., p. 22.

24 Gesner, op. cit.; Matthew, loc. cit., p. 48; “Report of a Case Tried at Albert Circuit, 1852, by His Honor Judge Wilmot and a Special Jury. Abraham Gesner vs. William Cairns” (Saint John, 1853), p. 168Google Scholar.

25 Abraham, Herbert, Asphalts and Allied Substances, 5th ed. (New York, 1945), I, 293Google Scholar.

26 According to his obituary in the New York Post, 6 April 1875, Eagle would have been 28 years old in 1853 at the time he began promoting Gesner's company. Except for the years 1860-1862, when he is shown in the New York City directories as “gas apparatus and coal oils, 254 Canal Street,” Eagle is listed as a ship's broker at various downtown addresses between 1848 and 1875.

27 Pamphlet in Bella C. Landauer Collection, New-York Historical Society.

28 But not for long. By 1858, Samuel Downer, Jr., of Boston, was paying ”$20 gold per ton at the wharf in New Brunswick.” (Merrill's reminiscences p. 884.)

29 U.S. Patents Nos. 11,203, 11,204, and 11,205, for “Improvements in Kerosene Burning Fluids.”

30 This account, probably by G. W. or John Frederick Gesner, appeared in the Engineering and Mining Journal, 9 Feb. 1884, pp. 99-100. It is interesting etymologically because it explains the origin of the -ene ending, hitherto a mystery. Uncertainty over the origin of this termination (Dr. Gesner, op. cit., p. 9, “explained” the word merely by announcing that it was derived “from κηρός, wax, and ἕλαιον, oil”) led to numerous misspellings, the chief of which, kerosine, was “officially” adopted a few years ago by the standardization committees of the American Society for Testing Materials and the British Institute of Petroleum. This needless spelling alteration, which is without historical validity, has fortunately made little headway; both the Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries continue to recognize only the original spelling, kerosene.

31 Deed, Bliss and Sneden to Eagle, Queens County Land Records, Liber 128, p. 263; Eagle to North American Kerosene Gas Light Co., p. 346; Smith to Kerosene Co., p. 344; Ruggles to Kerosene Co., p. 341.

32 Ruggles, Henry Stoddard, The Ruggles Family of England and America, 3rd ed. (New York, 1896), pp. 150–1Google Scholar; Lanier, Henry W., A Century of Banking in New York, 1822-1922 (New York, 1922), p. 277Google Scholar, shows Philo Ruggles as one of the incorporators in 1822 of a predecessor of the present National City Bank of New York.

33 Engineering and Mining Journal, 9 Feb. 1884, p. 99.

34 Drawings in Gesner's Practical Treatise (1861) are without doubt those of buildings and equipment at the Kerosene Works.

35 G. W. Gesner, loc. cit., p. 8; Engineering and Mining Journal, loc. cit.

36 Gesner, Abraham M.D., A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum and Other Distilled Oils, 2nd ed., Revised and Enlarged by Gesner, George Weltden (New York, 1865), p. 10Google Scholar; New York Commercial Advertiser, 24 Aug. 1859.

37 Circular letter, “Kerosene Oils, Distilled from Coals. Not Explosive — Secured by Letters Patent,” in Bella C. Landauer Collection, New-York Historical Society.

38 Gesner, op. cit., p. 2.

39 Gesner, op. cit., p. 1.

40 Gesner, op. cit., pp. 3-4.

41 Prior to their entry into the Kerosene business, the Austen brothers had been associated with their father, David Austen, in the well-known auctioneering firm of Austen, Spicer & Co. The elder Austen had accumulated a large fortune in the days when almost all of New York's wholesale mercantile trade was handled by auction, but he and his sons had been wiped out by the failure of their firm in 1851, the result of too-liberal credit advances. Because of this recent failure, it is unlikely that the Austens had any surplus funds to invest in the Kerosene company at its start. See Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City, 6th ed. (New York, 1845), p. 3Google Scholar, which puts David Austen's worth at that time at $400,000. Location of the sons' firm is given in Engineering and Mining Journal, loc. cit., and New York City Directory, 1856-1857; biographical material in Barrett, Walter, The Old Merchants of New York City (New York, 1885), I, 115Google Scholar; III, 176.

42 G. W. Gesner (in his 1865 revision of his father's Practical Treatise, p. 11), the author of the Engineering and Mining Journal article, and Joshua Merrill, a competitor (Merrill's reminiscences, p. 883) all agree it was Austen who brought the flat-wick burner from Vienna. It is probable that petroleum illuminating oil in Europe, antedating those of America, were produced in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, using oil from petroleum springs of Galicia. SirRedwood, Boverton, A Treatise on Petroleum, 4th ed. (London, 1922), I, 20Google Scholar, says that by 1853, a petroleum oil was used to light the station of the Emperor Ferdinand's North Railway, and that in 1854, petroleum illuminants gained a footing in Vienna as an article of commerce. This statement is corroborated by Austen's discovery of a suitable lamp, already developed in Vienna. Young's first production of illuminating oil in 1856 was shipped chiefly to Vienna (Bailey, see citation 44, below).

43 Engineering and Mining Journal, loc. cit.

44 The best material available on Young was compiled by Edwin M. Bailey, a member of the Scottish Branch of the Institute of Petroleum, who had access to all of Young's correspondence, diaries, and scrapbooks. This material, published as “James Young — Founder of the Mineral Oil Industry” (Institute of Petroleum Review, London, 1948, II, 180-3, 216-21, and 249–52Google Scholar) and “The Dawn of Petroleum Refining,” (I. P., Review, II, 357–60)Google Scholar, has not previously been noticed by scholars writing on Young in this country. The author is indebted for photostatic copies of these articles to Prof. R. J. Forbes, of Amsterdam.

45 Bailey, loc. cit., p. 359.

46 Young prospered because of his shrewd management and good patent position. He became wealthy, and a benefactor of scientific education and African missions. His best-known effort in the latter category was his financing of some of the expeditions of Dr. Livingstone. His firm, Young's Paraffin Light & Mineral Oil Co., Ltd., is still in existence, since 1919 a wholly owned subsidiary of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

47 Merrill's account, loc. cit., p. 890.

48 Merrill gives the name as “Philbrook,” no doubt a misprint, for it appears as “Philbrick” on a circular in the Landauer Collection.

49 Merrill, loc. cit., p. 880.

50 This and other patents are listed and described by Antisell, Thomas M.D., The Manufacture of Photogenic or Hydro-Carbon Oils (New York, 1860), p. 141Google Scholar. Dr. Antisell was professor of chemistry in the medical department of Georgetown College, Washington, and U. S. Patent Office examiner in matters involving chemical processes.

51 Merrill, loc. cit., p. 890.

52 Ibid.

53 Gesner, op. cit., p. 881. This ties in with Bailey's account. Bailey and Merrill agree on most matters of fact.

54 Gesner, op. cit., p. 884.

55 Even such a scholarly work as Giddens, Paul H., The Birth of the Oil Industry (New York, 1938), p. 19Google Scholar, falls into the customary error of crediting Young with the manufacture of illuminating oil in 1847. This and similar misstatements appear in many oil histories and are a chief reason why Gesner's pioneer role has not been more fully appreciated.

56 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, Vol. 42 (New York, 1860), 245–6Google Scholar.

57 Merrill, loc. cit., p. 884.

58 New York Commercial Advertiser, 24 Aug. 1859.

59 Gesner, Practical Treatise (1861), pp. 20-21.

60 The Kerosene Works were being called by the simpler name, New York Kerosene Oil Co., early in 1859, although Gesner's 1861 book still refers to the company as the North American Kerosene Gas Light Co.

61 Hunt's, loc. cit., lists as of 31 Dec. 1859, 33 coal oil works with a daily manufacturing capacity of 18,750 gallons and an unnamed number of other plants with an additional 4,000 gallons a day capacity; “two years ago,” the magazine says, “there were only two or three oil-works in the country.” Dr. Gesner (Practical Treatise [1861], pp. 128-9) lists by name 56 coal-oil plants in operation a year later, 11 of them in the New York area. In addition, 16 new establishments worked petroleum only. Oldest of these was the one-barrel still of Samuel Kier in Pittsburgh, from which Col. A. C. Ferris, of 201 Pearl Street, comer Maiden Lane, had obtained and treated since 1857 a petroleum distillate which he called “Carbon Oil.” By the end of 1859, according to Hunt's, Carbon Oil production was still insignificant, less than 300 gallons a day. Ferris sold 28 gallons of crude petroleum, obtained from seepages, to the Kerosene Works during March and April, 1858 (The Derrick's Handbook, I, 14).

62 Landauer Collection, New-York Historical Society.

63 Commercial Advertiser and Merrill accounts.

64 A. Gesner, op. cit.

65 Gesner, Practical Treatise (1861), p. 11.

66 There is a tradition, and some indications to support it, that the original Kerosene Co. failed in the early 1860's in the face of competition from the illuminants made from crude petroleum. The Derrick's Handbook, I, 14, mentions such a failure and names “Charles Delmonico, of New York restaurant fame” as one of the heavy losers. This account cannot be taken as conclusive evidence, for it is full of gross inaccuracies, including Delmonico's first name.

67 Advertisement, Pratt's Astral Oil, Newtown Register, 6 July 1876, p. 1.

68 As the Queens Works of Standard Oil Company of New York (now Socony-Vacuum Oil Co.), the plant operated until May, 1951. A junk dealer bought the refinery in 1952 and has since removed the equipment, although the buildings are still standing, including two that fit the description given in the Commercial Advertiser.

69 Gesner, Practical Treatise (1861), p. 32.