The founder of McIlhenny Company, Edmund McIlhenny was born in Maryland. McIlhenny arrived in New Orleans in 1841 and became a banker. Before the Civil War, Edmund McIlhenny owned a prosperous sugar plantation on Avery Island in Louisiana’s gulf.
One plant that survived was the red pepper plants. McIlhenny began creating a pepper sauce from these plants, which evolved into Tabasco sauce.
McIlhenny was urged to sell his sauce commercially. He named it Tabasco, a word of Mexican India origin, began marketing it in 1868 and patented it in 1870.
It was said that McIlhenny first sold bottled Tabasco sauce for $1 per bottle wholesale in 1868, a fairly steep price in inflationary term.
During McIlhenny’s entire career from 1868 to 1890 he produced about 350,000 bottles of Tabasco sauce.
Although McIlhenny first exported a small quantity of Tabasco sauce in late 1873 and early 1874 to England and France, he did not export the product in notable quantities until later in that decade.
Tabasco sauce by McIlhenny Company
History and Global Rise of the Navel Orange
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