John Avery McIlhenny

John Avery McIlhenny (1867–1942) was an American businessman, soldier, politician and public servant. He was the eldest son of Tabasco sauce inventor Edmund McIlhenny.

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.

In 1898 McIlhenny resigned from the company to serve in the Spanish–American War, joining Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders volunteer cavalry regiment. "[B]y his high qualities and zealous attention to duty," wrote Roosevelt in his memoir of the campaign, McIlhenny "speedily rose to a sergeantcy, and finally won his lieutenancy for gallantry in action." McIlhenny participated in the Battle of Las Guasimas and the Battle of San Juan Hill and continued to serve despite suffering from measles and malaria.

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