Career
Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1815, Edmund McIlhenny moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1840, finding work in the Louisiana banking industry. By the eve of the American Civil War, he had acquired a small fortune and became an independent bank owner. They would have eight children together:
Sara Avery McIlhenny (1860 - 1948)
Dudley Avery McIlhenny (1861 - 1862)
Edmund McIlhenny (1865 - 1865)
John Avery McIlhenny (1867 - 1942)
Mary Avery McIlhenny Bradford (1869 - 1954)
Edward Avery McIlhenny (1872 - 1949)
Rufus Avery McIlhenny (1876 - 1940)
Paul Avery McIlhenny (1877 - 1962)
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, first as a clerk in a commissary office, then as a financial agent for the paymaster.
The South"s economic collapse after its defeat ruined McIlhenny, who now lived with his in-laws in their plantation house on Avery Island, Louisiana.
lieutenant was there that McIlhenny tended the family garden, where, according to tradition, he grew a variety of fruits and vegetables, including tabasco peppers. Between 1866 and 1868, McIlhenny — probably inspired by an earlier sauce introduced by New Orleans-area entrepreneur Maunsel White — experimented with making a sauce from the peppers in the Avery family garden.
In 1868 he grew his first commercial pepper crop, and the next year sold the first bottles of his new product, which he called Tabasco brand pepper sauce. In 1870 McIlhenny obtained letters patent for his invention, 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 in places like New Orleans, New Iberia, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas.
By the early 1870s, however, he had broken into larger markets, such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston, helped by major nineteenth century food manufacturer and distributor East. C. Hazard and Company. Indeed, he made no mention of in an autobiographical sketch composed toward the end of his life, nor was it mentioned in his obituaries. By the turn of the twentieth century, McIlhenny"s invention could be found on tables worldwide, and it has since become a culinary favorite.
Today each carton of bears a facsimile of McIlhenny"s signature.
