Monument to Abraham Pineo Gesner UEL
Kings County, Nova Scotia
Kings County honours the memory of United Empire Loyalists with monument to Abraham Pineo Gesner, UE – the inventor of kerosene – at Chipman Corner. Less than 10km away at Port Williams, visitors to St. John’s Anglican Church will discover the grave of his father Henry Gesner UEL who served in the King’s Orange Rangers.
The Gesner family were of German origin and came from the Netherlands to settled in the Hudson Valley near Tappan, New York during the middle of the 18th century. When the American Revolution began, Nicholas Gesner, the grandfather of Abraham Pineo Gesner remained loyal and lost his farm to the rebels. His two twin sons Henry and Abraham joined the King’s Orange Rangers and served with the British forces throughout the conflict. Afterwards they both came to Nova Scotia where they farmed.
For further information on Gesner and the development of kerosene, refer to ABRAHAM GESNER in the online Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume IX (1861-1870), described by Loris S. Russell (1976).
In 2019 Brian McConnell UE created a video montage of photographs showing both the monument and cemetery:
Video by Brian McConnell:
Click here to view the video if the embed above doesn’t work.