E McIlhenny's Son Corp history

The salt brine springs, however, remained active, first distinguishing themselves during the War of 1812 when Andrew Jackson's troops used Avery Island salt in the Battle of New Orleans.

In 1818, Sarah Craig Marsh's father purchased some land on Avery Island, then known as Isle Petite Anse.

But all of the seed comes from Avery Island. It is capsicum frutescens, a descendant of the very peppers supposedly brought back from the Mexican War by a family friend in 1848 and a separate - and much hotter - species of peppers than the cayenne or jalapeno peppers that most competitors use.

In 1868, McIlhenny sent 350 samples to wholesalers in New York--including the E.C. Hazard Grocery Company, owned by the cousin of a friend.

By 1869 McIlhenny received thousands of orders for the sauce at $1.00 a bottle.

In 1872, McIlhenny established a London office to meet the heavy demands of the European market for Tabasco sauce.

When Edmund McIlhenny died in 1890, his son John Avery McIlhenny assumed control of making the Tabasco sauce.

John McIlhenny also commissioned an opera company to perform the "Burlesque Opera of Tabasco." When in 1893 Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club asked permission to use Tabasco in one of its reviews, John McIlhenny bought the rights to the review and staged it in New York.

Around 1895, he founded a private bird sanctuary known as Bird City to protect endangered snowy egrets.

The son of Tabasco sauce inventor E. McIlhenny, Ned assumed the presidency of McIlhenny Company in 1898 and ran the world-famous pepper sauce operation until his death fifty-one years later.

Simmons, chief representative of the new guard at McIlhenny, cannot muster enthusiasm for new products -they are so ''iffy,'' he says. It is the company whose executives still cite a nearly disastrous push into specialty-food products in the early 1900's as a reason why they have generally shunned attempts to develop new products or capitalize on the well-known Tabasco name.

After many years spent transforming the landscape, Ned opened Jungle Gardens to the public in 1935.

When oil was found on Avery Island in 1942, Mr.

The result is that Tabasco's share in volume has slipped to 8.8 percent, down from more than 10 percent in 1982.

The year 1991 also brought the first acquisition for the company.