[vooRHis] ANCESTRY OF ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN 109 



Nicolas, the youngest of these seven brothers, informs us in his 

 diary that "Father Gesner admonished his sons, Jacob, Isaac, Henry 

 and Abraham to take opportunity to go to New York now in possession 

 of the British. With some others, after their father had admonished 

 them to be good boys, they went off in an open pettiauger belonging 

 to Dennis Sneeden". It is doubtful whether the boys ever saw their 

 father again. Jacob became a captain in the English army and was 

 lost at sea. Of Isaac no further record has been found beyond the 

 fact that he was with the English forces in New York. 



Henry and his twin brother Abraham, then eighteen years of 

 age, joined the King's Orange rangers, a loyalist corps raised mainly 

 in Orange county, New York, by Lieut. Bayard. Both boys were with 

 the forces of Sir Henry Clinton in his northern expedition and were 

 present at the storming and taking of Fort Mongtomery. After 

 seeing active service in several engagements the Rangers were ordered 

 to Nova Scotia and embarked for Halifax in October 1778. They 

 remained in garrison duty until 1783 and were then disbanded. In 

 consequence of their loyalist sympathies, Henry and Abraham suffered 

 the loss of all their patrimony, in lieu of which the British Government 

 granted Henry 400 acres in the Cornwallis valley, and Abraham a 

 tract of similar area near Annapolis Royal in the Annapolis valley. 



Abraham served in the militia of Nova Scotia for forty years as 

 major. He was one of the first to develop fruit culture in Nova 

 Scotia and devoted himself to his estate which he increased by the 

 purchase of 1,500 additional acres. In 1824 he was appointed to the 

 bench of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. "His uprightness of 

 character and sincerity of purpose commanded the respect of parlia- 

 ment and people". There are many descendants of Abraham Gesner 

 both in Nova Scotia and in the United States, one of whom lives on 

 the old Gesner place at Belle Isle, Annapolis. 



Colonel Henry Gesner, the great-grandfather of the poet Lamp- 

 man, after receiving his grant of 400 actes of primeval forest, began 

 the life of a pioneer and, before his death, had developed his property 

 to a high state of cultivation. The old residence at Cornwallis still 

 exists in good repair, backed by a great orchard of nearly 7,000 apple 

 trees largely grown from seeds brought from New York by Colonel 

 Gesner. A portion of the old dam forming part of the works of his grist- 

 mill still remains. In this mill the Colonel employed a lad who in 

 after years was the father of one of Canada's celebrated statesmen (Sir 

 Chas. Tupper). The military experience which Henry had acquired 

 during the American revolution proved of great value to the province 

 in later years. In 1818 he held a major's commission in the 16th 



