Albert Mines is a community in the southeastern corner
Map
of the

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

, Canada. It is due south of the Village of Hillsborough and bordered by the communities of Demoiselle Creek (site of Hopewell Rocks) and Edgetts Landing. Prominent buildings today include the Albert Mines Baptist Church. The locale is notable in the history of the petroleum industry as being the source of the first ore used to distill

kerosene Kerosene, or paraffin, is a combustibility, combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in Aviation fuel, aviation as well as households. Its name derives from the Greek (''kērós'') meaning " ...

Mining history

In 1820, a deposit of

Albertite Albertite is a variety of Bitumen, asphalt found in the Albert Formation in Albert County, New Brunswick, and in a deposit at Dingwall, in the north-east of Scotland. It is a type of solid hydrocarbon. Albertite has a black colour, a resinous lu ...

, variously described as "solid petroleum" or " asphalt" was discovered by Abraham Gesner, who understood its potential as an alternative to

whale oil Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train-oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' ("tear drop"). Sperm oil, a special kind of oil used in the cavities of sperm whales, ...

as a source of light. After developing a process to distill the ore into what he would call

(paraffin in Europe) the ore was mined between 1854 and 1881, yielding an estimated 200,000 tons of Albertite. Mining disputes, including the nature of

, were subject to legal action in the 1850s. A section of the Albert Railway ran through the area beginning 1877 until the track was dismantled in 1955 A century-old gypsum quarry supplied a National Gypsum mill in nearby Hillsborough and ceased production in the 1980s when the mill closed.

Notes

References

* {{cite book , last1=Martin , first1=Gwen L. , title=Gesner's Dream: The Trials and Triumphs of Early Mining in New Brunswick , date=2003 , publisher=Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum , location=Fredericton , isbn=1894475-46-1

Mining history

See also

Notes

References

Further reading