Edward Avery McIlhenny - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Edward Avery "Ned" McIlhenny (1872 – 1949), son of Tabasco brand pepper sauce

Tabasco sauce

Tabasco sauce is the brand name for a hot sauce produced by US-based McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana. Tabasco sauce is made from tabasco peppers , vinegar, and salt, and aged in white oak barrels for three years. It has a hot, spicy flavor...

inventor Edmund McIlhenny

Edmund McIlhenny

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...

, was a Louisiana businessman, explorer, and conservationist

Conservationist

Conservationists are proponents or advocates of conservation. They advocate for the protection of all the species in an ecosystem with a strong focus on the natural environment...

.

Born in 1872 at Avery Island, Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

, McIlhenny was educated by private tutors before attending Dr. Holbrook's Military School

Dr. Holbrook's Military School

Dr. Holbrook's Military School was a military academy and boarding school for boys located on Briar Cliff, which overlooked the Hudson River near Sing Sing , New York....

in Sing Sing (now Ossining

Ossining (village), New York

Ossining is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 25,060 at the 2010 census. As a village, it is located in the Town of Ossining.-Geography:Ossining borders the eastern shores of the widest part of the Hudson River....

), New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. McIlhenny enrolled at Lehigh University

Lehigh University

Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...

, where he joined Phi Delta Theta

Phi Delta Theta

Phi Delta Theta , also known as Phi Delt, is an international fraternity founded at Miami University in 1848 and headquartered in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, Beta Theta Pi, and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad. The fraternity has about 169 active chapters and colonies in over 43 U.S...

fraternity, but he dropped out of school to join Frederick Cook

Frederick Cook

Frederick Albert Cook was an American explorer and physician, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This would have been a year before April 6, 1909, the date claimed by Robert Peary....

's 1894 Arctic expedition as an ornithologist. In 1897 he financed his own Arctic expedition to Point Barrow

Point Barrow

Point Barrow or Nuvuk is a headland on the Arctic coast in the U.S. state of Alaska, northeast of Barrow. It is the northernmost point of all the territory of the United States, at...

, Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

, where he helped to save over a hundred stranded whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

fleet sailors

Sailors

Sailors is the plural form of Sailor, or mariner.Sailors may also refer to:*Sailors , a 1964 Swedish film*Ken Sailors , American basketball playerSports teams*Erie Sailors, baseball teams in Pennsylvania, USA...

(including Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

adventurer and entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

Jujiro Wada

Jujiro Wada was a Japanese adventurer and entrepreneur who achieved fame for his exploits in turn-of-the-20th-century Alaska and Yukon Territory.-Origins:...

). McIlhenny also holds the Louisiana

Louisiana

state alligator record, catching a gator just over 19 feet in length.

As businessman

On his return to Louisiana, McIlhenny assumed control of McIlhenny Company, overseeing Tabasco sauce production as president of the organization until his death fifty-one years later. During his tenure, McIlhenny expanded, modernized, and standardized sauce production, as well as experimented with new ways of promoting the world-famous product, such as advertising on radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

.

McIlhenny also introduced the now ubiquitous modern screw-top Tabasco sauce bottle, which replaced the original cork-top Tabasco sauce bottle that had been used from 1868 to 1927; he also redesigned the iconic Tabasco diamond logo trademark, largely creating the version known today.

Nutria issue

In a venture unrelated to Tabasco sauce, McIlhenny also operated a nutria farm on Avery Island from 1938 until his death. During that time, he intentionally released a large number of nutria into Louisiana's wetlands, as did a few other individuals during the same time period. At the time, state and federal agencies advocated for these releases. They believed nutria would provide a profitable new fur

Fur

Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...

resource and help manage the spread of overly abundant plants such as water hyacinth

Water hyacinth

The seven species of water hyacinth comprise the genus Eichhornia. Water hyacinth are a free-floating perennial aquatic plant native to tropical and sub-tropical South America. With broad, thick, glossy, ovate leaves, water hyacinth may rise above the surface of the water as much as 1 meter in...

and alligator weed

Alligator weed

Alternanthera philoxeroides, commonly known as Alligator weed, is an immersed aquatic plant. It originated in South America, but has spread to many parts of the world and is considered an invasive species in Australia, China, New Zealand, Thailand and the United States.Alligator weed can grow in a...

.

After the releases, however, the feral

Feral

A feral organism is one that has changed from being domesticated to being wild or untamed. In the case of plants it is a movement from cultivated to uncultivated or controlled to volunteer. The introduction of feral animals or plants to their non-native regions, like any introduced species, may...

population became unmanageable, and its overwhelmingly negative impact on Louisiana's wetlands became apparent. (Nutria feed on vegetation that is crucial to sustaining Louisiana's coastline and protecting the state's sugarcane

Sugarcane

Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...

and rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

fields.) By 1960, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries estimated the nutria population along coastal regions to exceed 20 million. The latest report from the U.S. Department of the Interior estimates that 100000 acres (404.7 km²) of Louisiana's coastal wetlands are currently being affected by nutria "eat outs".

Though McIlhenny is popularly attributed with singlehandedly helping to introduce nutria to Louisiana, the nature of his role in the animal's proliferation is a complex one. He publicly embraced the notion that he was the first to import and release nutria into the wild; however, subsequent historic inquiries prompted by McIlhenny Company suggest that other individuals preceded him in the state's nutria business. The Tabasco Web site, TABASCO.com, states that McIlhenny was "at least the third nutria farmer" in Louisiana and at least the second to intentionally release nutria into the state's wild.

As conservationist

McIlhenny founded the Bird City

Bird City (wildfowl refuge)

Bird City is a private wildfowl refuge or bird sanctuary located on Avery Island in coastal Iberia Parish, Louisiana.It was founded by Tabasco sauce heir and conservationist Edward Avery McIlhenny, whose family owned Avery Island...

wildfowl refuge

Wildlife refuge

A wildlife refuge, also called a wildlife sanctuary, may be a naturally occurring sanctuary, such as an island, that provides protection for species from hunting, predation or competition, or it may refer to a protected area, a geographic territory within which wildlife is protected...

on Avery Island around 1895, which helped to save the snowy egret

Snowy Egret

The Snowy Egret is a small white heron. It is the American counterpart to the very similar Old World Little Egret, which has established a foothold in the Bahamas....

from extinction. Enrolling the help of businessman and conservationist Charles Willis Ward

Charles Willis Ward

Born in Michigan in 1856, Charles Willis Ward was a noted American businessman and conservationist.Ward operated the Cottage Gardens Nurseries in Queens, Long Island, New York. As a leading grower of carnations, he helped to establish the American Carnation Society...

, the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

, and the Sage Foundation

Russell Sage Foundation

The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. Founded in 1907 and headquartered in New York City, the foundation is a research center, a funding source for studies by scholars at other institutions, and a key member of the...

, McIlhenny was instrumental in securing nearly 175000 acres (708.2 km²) of south Louisiana coastal marshland as wildfowl refuges. He banded over 285,000 birds during his lifetime and ran a game farm on Avery Island that experimented with breeding new animal varieties. He helped to introduce the nutria to Louisiana, although — contrary to popular belief — he did not import the creatures to Louisiana, nor was he the first Louisianan to set them loose in the wild on purpose.

McIlhenny used his 170 acre (0.6879662 km²) personal estate, known as Jungle Gardens

Jungle Gardens

Jungle Gardens is a botanical garden and bird sanctuary located on Avery Island, Louisiana . The gardens are open daily except for major holidays; an admission fee is charged....

, to propagate both Louisiana-native and imported plant varieties, including azaleas, irises

Iris (plant)

Iris is a genus of 260-300species of flowering plants with showy flowers. It takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow, referring to the wide variety of flower colors found among the many species...

, camellias, papyrus

Papyrus

Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....

, and bamboo

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

. He wrote numerous academic articles, mainly about birds and reptiles, oversaw the publication in English of two European botanical treatises, and edited Charles L. Jordan's unfinished manuscript The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting (a book often mistakenly attributed to McIlhenny). He also wrote books about alligators, egrets, and African-American gospel music

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

, including:

Befo' De War Spirituals (1933).
Bird City (1934).
The Alligator's Life History (1935).
The Autobiography of an Egret (1940).

Death and legacy

McIlhenny died in 1949, three years after suffering a debilitating stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

; he is buried on Avery Island. Today, Jungle Gardens and Bird City continue to serve as havens for bird and plant species; they are also popular tourist destinations. Furthermore, the nearly 175000 acres (708.2 km²) of coastal marshland he helped to set aside as wildfowl refuges continue to exist as state wildlife areas. McIlhenny's illustrated and written documentation of plant and animal life on Avery Island was donated as a collection to Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...

. The E. A. McIlhenny Collection of natural history books at the Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University

Libraries is named in his honor.

As businessman

Nutria issue

As conservationist

Death and legacy

See also