page_title: John Avery McIlhenny
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: John Avery McIlhenny / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: 1890s Tabasco pepper sauce advertisement
context_page_description: John Avery McIlhenny was an American businessman, soldier, politician and civil servant. He was the eldest son of Tabasco sauce inventor Edmund McIlhenny.
context_section_description: Born on Avery Island, Louisiana, McIlhenny was educated on the Island by private tutors before attending Dr. Holbrook's Military School in Sing Sing (now Ossining), New York and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He later attended business school in Poughkeepsie, New York, as well as Tulane and Harvard universities (although he did not complete his studies).
  In the late 1880s McIlhenny worked as a clerk on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, but returned to Avery Island on the death of his father in 1890. Assuming control of Tabasco operations, he ran McIlhenny Company for eight years, expanding and modernizing production, and increasing promotion and advertising of the increasingly famous product.
caption: Tabasco brand pepper sauce advertisement from John Avery McIlhenny's tenure as head of McIlhenny Company, circa 1895
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