One of the things we like to keep up with is the lore & history of chile peppers and hot sauce. Chuck Evans, of Montezuma Brand, has done quite a bit of research into the original history of the Tabasco (R) brand and the connection with a certain Mr. Maunsel White, who has an interesting connection to the whole McIlhenny clan and business. With certain elements of the story coming to light even now, we will present the story as penned by (and with permission from) Chuck Evans. Here is part 1:

Captain Maunsel White’s Direct Connection to Edmund McIlhenny, Founder of Avery Island’s McIlhenny Company & the Tabasco® Brand

Maunsel White (1783-1863) was born near Limerick, Ireland and orphaned at age six. He arrived in America at age thirteen and lived in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. However, little is known about his life until he joined the New Orleans militia.

In 1814, Captain Maunsel White, at the age of 31, was placed in charge of a white men’s militia regiment, named the Louisiana Blues, under the command of Major Jean Baptiste Plauché, who reported directly to Major General Andrew Jackson, commander of the Seventh Military District and the United States forces in the Gulf campaign against Britain’s blockade of American ports. General Jackson was later elected President of the United States in 1828.[1]

Major Plauché headed the New Orleans uniformed militia companies totaling two hundred and eighty-seven men.[2] Each of the four companies had its own distinctive, colorful uniform, and many of their members had previous military experience in France, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and Latin America. A certain Captain Dudley Avery (d.1816), a physician from Baton Rouge, served as a medical officer in a regiment of uniformed militia during the battle of New Orleans and continued to write accounts of the conflict.[3] Captain Dudley Avery and Captain Maunsel White served in the same New Orleans uniformed militia regiment.

Between 1814 and 1816, Captain Dudley Avery wrote numerous letters to Mary Ann Browne Avery, the parents of Daniel Dudley Avery (1810-1879), from New Orleans where he also served as a member of the state legislature. In 1813, Captain Dudley Avery was appointed justice of the peace in East Baton Rouge Parish. In his letters of 1814, Captain Dudley Avery mentioned General Jackson, the progress of the war, and some of the discussions in the legislature. In December 1814, Captain Dudley Avery wrote about the troops that were in New Orleans, their expectation of being attacked, and later, that the enemy had landed and two battles had taken place. At the time of the Battle of New Orleans, detachments composed of United States army troops came from Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana militia; Baratarian pirates; Choctaw warriors; and free black soldiers. Major General Andrew Jackson defeated overwhelming British forces in 1815 in America’s first military victory.

Louisianans contributed to the American victory in many ways. Behind the front lines white and free black men forty-five years and older formed home guards to protect private property and maintain order in New Orleans and surrounding towns and posts. Slaves and citizens helped widen canals and build defenses along them. The New Basin Canal was built by Irish immigrants beginning in 1832 and opening for traffic in 1838. Slaves also fortified military positions and fought in several battles of the Louisiana campaign. Women at home made clothing for the troops and flags and bandages for the militia regiments, while nuns and free women of color nursed the wounded at hospitals and convents. [4]

After the Battle of New Orleans, now-Colonel Maunsel White became active in mercantile activities as a commission merchant and forwarding merchant.[5] Due to his extensive wartime contacts, Maunsel White was appointed a New Orleans commissioner. The New Orleans Canal and Banking Company, which owned and built the New Basin Canal, was founded by Maunsel White.[6] Financially, the canal was a success serving as a transport to downtown New Orleans and opening up trade with communities north of Lake Pontchartrain and cities along the Gulf of Mexico.

Maunsel White invested heavily as a sugar cane farmer, receiving U.S. Patent No. 1,326 on September 17, 1839 for an evaporating pan in setting and arranging sugar kettles. Maunsel White also marketed cotton grown from his war contacts, including General John Coffee from Tennessee, the subsequent Surveyor General of Mississippi Territory & Alabama Lands, who also served under General Jackson.[7]

Maunsel White operated his Deer Range plantation growing sugar cane, corn, and other crops. In 1858, his son Maunsell White, Jr. (1835-1883) purchased “Junior Place”, formerly the Velasco Plantation. Maunsel White and his eldest son kept extensive plantation records, including a set of plantation journals from 1852-1883 documenting the operation of the White’s plantations; diaries of his agricultural pursuits and economic conditions, including New Orleans business news, crop predictions, and cotton shipments. Also included are a set of autograph books and letters of correspondence with Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and letters written to his eldest son, who attended Mandeville College near Baton Rouge as well as the University of Virginia. These records are documented in the “Inventory of the Maunsel White Papers, 1802-1912”, Collection Number 2234, at the Manuscripts Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In 1846 legislators voted to move the site of the state capital from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Colonel Maunsel White was appointed as one of three statehouse commissioners to over see building the new capitol. Before building began, Baton Rouge General Assemblyman Daniel Dudley Avery replaced one of the commissioners.[8] Lawyer, representative to the General Assembly from Baton Rouge, and eventual Judge Daniel Avery, who was also joint owner of the Petit Anse Island sugar plantation, and Deer Range sugar plantation owner Maunsel White became colleagues.

The Lore of Red Peppers

Of special interest in the Maunsel White Papers is a letter of 13 June 1847 in which Maunsel White described the reception of returning Mexican-American war heroes in New Orleans. The war arose from the competing claims to Texas by Mexico and the United States in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Texas had just fought a war of independence against Mexico, which considered Texas a “breakaway province” and refused to recognize its independence. The root causes of war were westward expansion on the part of Americans and political instability in Mexico in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence which had made it difficult for the United States to negotiate with Mexico and for Mexico to administer its northern territories. American troops entered Mexico City where the Mexican-American War ended in 1848 establishing the southern borders of the United States, where the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo resulted in the United States purchase of Mexico’s northern territories.

American soldiers fighting in the Mexican-American war returned to New Orleans from Vera Cruz[9] (Veracruz) which port city is just north of an area of Mexico known as the Tabasco region (which is now a state in Mexico). According to a series of articles from the Metropolitan News-Enterprise and conversation with the great-great grandson bearing the same name of Maunsel White; The New Orleans Daily Delta published an article about Colonel White’s new enterprise on January 26, 1850:

“Col. White has introduced the celebrated tobasco red pepper, the very strongest of all peppers, of which he cultivated a large quantity with the view of supplying his neighbors, and diffusing it throughout the state.”

The article reports:

“Owing to its oleaginous character, Col. White found it impossible to preserve it by drying; but by pouring strong vinegar on it after boiling, he has made a sauce or pepper decoction of it, which possesses in a most concentrated form all the quantities of the vegetable. A single drop of the sauce will flavor a whole plate of soup or other food. The use of a decoction like this, particularly in preparing the food for laboring persons, would be exceedingly beneficial in a relaxing climate like this. Col. White has not had a single case of cholera among his large gang of negroes since the disease appeared in the south. He attributes this to the free use of this valuable agent.”[10]

Maunsel White is likely to have come by the tobasco [sic] pepper from American soldiers returning from Vera Cruz to the celebration in New Orleans. The simple explanation is that American soldiers, exposed to the foreign produce and foodstuffs in a distant land where many would be returning to farming and agricultural pursuits after their service, would be interested in crops that they have seen and tasted in the mercados (marketplaces), and especially the abundance of vegetables, herbs, and spices for sale in the marketplaces of the cities of Monterrey and Vera Cruz, and in the cavernous Mercado Tlatelolco in Mexico City.

Where Maunsel White participated in the celebrations as a city official, it is not difficult to imagine, and certainly fits logically within the time frame that Maunsel White sauce was first concocted (which is dated by two different accounts to have been either 1849 or 1850) that the alleged traveler from Central America story perpetuated in McIlhenny family lore was actually a soldier returning through the port of New Orleans from the Mexican-American war to a festive reception in June of 1847, being honored and greeted by a prominent former military officer who was also a city commissioner. Returning soldiers often waited several weeks in the port of Vera Cruz for a vessel to set sail for New Orleans, therefore, it is likely that all manner of pocket souvenirs including trinkets and clothing, spices and produce, were transported back to the states.

According to McIlhenny family tradition, the story passed down from Tabasco® sauce founder, Edmund McIlhenny (1815-1890), is that he obtained some red pepper seeds from a Central American traveler who recently arrived in Louisiana.

Another version of the story related by Edmund McIlhenny, Jr. was that a certain Friend Gleason, a soldier in the Mexican-American War, brought seed to his friend Edmund McIlhenny.[11]

However, while this event may have occurred, it is more likely that a soldier in the Mexican-American War gave Maunsel White tobasco seed.[12] In 1849 Maunsel White was growing tobasco peppers at Deer Range Plantation long before Edmund McIlhenny began growing tabasco peppers on Petit Anse Island Plantation, the salt dome whose name was later changed to Avery Island. Edmund McIlhenny did not even live on the Avery plantation until 1860, after his marriage to Mary Eliza Avery in 1859, and there is no record that he grew his tabasco peppers anywhere else. Further, there is a significant gap in time in McIlhenny family lore where the Mexican-American War ended in 1848 and when Edmund McIlhenny planted his first tabasco chile crop.

Edmund had arrived in New Orleans only seven years prior and during that time as a Crescent City banker was busy establishing his five banks. It was only during the Reconstruction period, where the McIlhennys and Averys were financially struggling that the Avery plantation was of significant economic importance to their survival.

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