Don't Give UP!

DON'T GIVE UP!

Born in Hagerston, 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.

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 comissary 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, named after them.

Avery Island is built on a salt dome in the bayou country.

A dozen years before the Civil War, a soldier returning from Mexico gave Edmund some dried peppers. He liked them and decided to plant them.

His in-laws plantation home was plundered, the crops were ruined and all that was left was a overgrown field of PEPPERS.

They were reduced down to salt and peppers in abundance. Then he got to work.

He harvested the peppers and began the process of devising a spicy sauces using Avery Island salt, and some French vinegar. Digging through the town dump, he located 350 discarded perfume bottles. He cleaned them up and filled them with his sauce.

This sauce became a hit and has traveled around the world, now known as the Tabasco Company!

It all started with a man who refused to give up adn was determined to make it! No matter what live hands you, DON'T GIVE IT!