Everything about Edmund Mcilhenny totally explained
Edmund McIlhenny was an
American businessman and
manufacturer who invented
Tabasco brand pepper sauce.
Origin
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'd acquired a small fortune and became an independent bank owner.
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 home on
Avery Island, Louisiana. It was there that McIlhenny tended the family
garden, where, according to tradition, he grew a variety of
fruits and
vegetables, including
tabasco peppers.
Tabasco sauce
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'd broken into larger markets, such as
New York City,
Philadelphia, and
Boston, helped by major
nineteenth century food manufacturer and distributor
E. C. Hazard and Company.
Legacy
McIlhenny died in
1890, and apparently didn't consider his creation 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.
Regardless, his successors, sons
John Avery McIlhenny and
Edward Avery McIlhenny, 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. 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 Tabasco sauce bears a facsimile of McIlhenny's
signature.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Edmund Mcilhenny'.
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