Edmund McIlhenny (; 1815 – 25 November 1890) was an American businessman and manufacturer who founded McIlhenny Company, which was the first to mass produce

Tabasco sauce Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers ('' Capsicum frutescens'' var. ''tabasco''), and salt. It is produced by McIlhenny Company of Avery Island in south Louisiana, having been created over 150 years ago ...

. While company legend attributes the invention of the sauce to McIlhenny, plantation owner

Maunsel White Maunsel White (c. 1783 – December 17, 1863) was an Episcopalian American politician, merchant, and entrepreneur. He is remembered for promoting the use of peppers and peppery sauces – a brand of which his descendants still manufacture toda ...

is said by some to have been the first to cultivate and make a sauce from

tabasco pepper The tabasco pepper is a variety of the chili pepper species ''Capsicum frutescens'' originating in Mexico. It is best known through its use in Tabasco sauce, followed by peppered vinegar. Like all ''C. frutescens'' cultivars, the tabasco plant ...

s in the United States, and gave the recipe and pepper pods to his friend McIlhenny.Mark Robichaux, �
Ingredients of a Family Fortune
��, Oct. 10, 2007 in ''Wall Street Journal.'' Retrieved July 1, 2018.Jean Andrews,
Peppers: the Domesticated Capsicums
', p. 121, 1995. . Accessed July 1, 2018.

Biography

Born in

Hagerstown, Maryland Hagerstown is a city in Washington County, Maryland, United States and the county seat of Washington County. The population of Hagerstown city proper at the 2020 census was 43,527, and the population of the Hagerstown metropolitan area (exten ...

, in 1815, Edmund McIlhenny moved to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

, around 1840, finding work in the Louisiana banking industry. He was of Irish and Scottish descent. He had acquired a small fortune and became an independent bank owner. On June 30, 1859, he married Mary Eliza Avery. They had eight children. During the Civil War, McIlhenny fled with his in-laws, the Avery family, to Texas, where he served as a civilian employee of the

Confederate army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

, first as a

clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...

in a

commissary A commissary is a government official charged with oversight or an ecclesiastical official who exercises in special circumstances the jurisdiction of a bishop. In many countries, the term is used as an administrative or police title. It often c ...

office, then as a financial agent for the

paymaster A paymaster is someone appointed by a group of buyers, sellers, investors or lenders to receive, hold, and dispense funds, commissions, fees, salaries (remuneration) or other trade, loan, or sales proceeds within the private sector or public secto ...

. The

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

's economic collapse after its defeat ruined McIlhenny, who now lived with his in-laws in their

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...

Avery Island Avery Island (historically french: Île Petite Anse) is a salt dome best known as the source of Tabasco sauce. Located in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, United States, it is approximately inland from Vermilion Bay, which in turn opens onto the Gulf ...

, Louisiana. It was there that McIlhenny tended the family garden, where, according to tradition, he grew a variety of

fruits In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particula ...

and vegetables.

Tabasco sauce

According to one legend, McIlhenny was given

s and a recipe for

tabasco sauce Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers ('' Capsicum frutescens'' var. ''tabasco''), and salt. It is produced by McIlhenny Company of Avery Island in south Louisiana, having been created over 150 years ago ...

by a friend, plantation owner

, who died in 1863 – though company legend says McIlhenny himself invented the sauce between 1866 and 1868. In 1868, he grew his first commercial pepper crop, selling the first bottles of his product the following year, which he called ''Tabasco brand pepper sauce''. In 1870, McIlhenny obtained

letters patent Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, titl ...

for the sauce, which he packaged in cork-top two-ounce bottles with diamond logo labels very similar in appearance to those in present-day use. At first McIlhenny sold the product mainly along the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississ ...

in places including New Orleans,

New Iberia New Iberia (french: La Nouvelle-Ibérie; es, Nueva Iberia) is the largest city in and parish seat of Iberia Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The city of New Iberia is located approximately southeast of Lafayette, and forms part of the Laf ...

, Louisiana, and

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...

, Texas. By the early 1870s, however, he had broken into larger markets, such as New York City,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, helped by major nineteenth century food manufacturer and distributor E. C. Hazard and Company.Shane K. Bernard, "Tabasco: Edmund McIlhenny and the Birth of a Louisiana Pepper Sauce," ''Louisiana Cultural Vistas'' (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities publication), Fall 2005.

Death and legacy

McIlhenny died in 1890, and apparently did not consider his production of Tabasco sauce to have been a particularly notable accomplishment. Indeed, he made no mention of Tabasco sauce in an autobiographical sketch composed toward the end of his life, nor was it mentioned in his

obituaries An obituary (obit for short) is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. Acc ...

.TABASCO's Hot History
" ''Morning Edition'',

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

(NPR), 29 November 2002. Regardless, his successors, sons John Avery McIlhenny and

Edward Avery McIlhenny Edward Avery McIlhenny (March 29, 1872 – August 8, 1949), son of Tabasco brand pepper sauce tycoon Edmund McIlhenny, was an American businessman, explorer, bird bander and conservationist. He established a private wildlife refuge around his ...

, realized that their father had created a foundation on which they could build a larger family business, and they shortly expanded and modernized the manufacturing process. Today each

carton A carton is a box or container usually made of liquid packaging board, paperboard and sometimes of corrugated fiberboard. Many types of cartons are used in packaging. Sometimes a carton is also called a box. Types of cartons Folding carton ...

of Tabasco sauce bears a facsimile of McIlhenny's signature.

References

External links

Edmund McIlhenny
at

Find A Grave Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fin ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:McIlhenny, Edmund 1815 births 1890 deaths Acadiana American chief executives of food industry companies American people of Irish descent American people of Scottish descent People from Iberia Parish, Louisiana Louisiana cuisine People from Hagerstown, Maryland 19th-century American businesspeople

Biography

Tabasco sauce

Death and legacy

See also

References

External links