Edward Avery McIlhenny Alaska Expedition records

Edward Avery McIlhenny (1872-1949) was born on Avery Island Louisiana, the son of the founder of the McIlhenny Tabasco brand pepper sauce, Edmund McIlhenny. Edward was educated privately and then attended Dr. Holbrook's Military School in what is now Ossining, New York. He enrolled at Lehigh University but left in 1894 to accompany Frederick Cook's expedition to Alaska as an ornithologist.

In 1897, McIlhenny planned his own expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska to collect birds for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Dr. William Pepper, President of the Board of Managers of the Penn Museum, offered McIlhenny additional funds to make ethnographic collections. McIlhenny ended up wintering over in Alaska, returning to the West Coast in September, 1898. By then, Pepper had died and the Museum Board was unaware of McIlhenny's expedition. John Wanamaker generously covered Pepper's subscription.

Following his return to Louisiana, McIlhenny assumed control of the family business and was responsible for standardizing the production process and designing the label that is still in use today. He also continued his ornithological studies, and devoted himself to other pursuits, including land conservation and collecting African American spirituals.

The McIlhenny Collection consists of four series: correspondence, catalogue, ephemera, and photographs.

There is one folder of correspondence, 1897-1899, including the contract with Pepper and letters regarding the collections of human remains.

The second series consists of one bound catalogue (very fragile), in which McIlhenny listed the collections he made for the Penn Museum, including the Inuit names for each object.

The third series, ephemera, contains one item, the July 1897 issue of the Eskimo Bulletin. The provenance of this item is uncertain.

The fourth series, photographs, is the largest. McIlhenny sent 274 photographs to the Museum after the expedition, of which about 255 survive. They are organized by subject.

The photographs by E. A. McIlhenny were housed in the American Section for many decades, before the Museum Archives was established in 1978. At some point (1920s-1960s), for preservation reasons, the prints were mounted and labeled by American Section staff or volunteers. However, the typed labels are not correct. The prints are identified as "Greenland" and "Peary Expedition" but are McIlhenny's photographs instead. We have confirmed that the McIlhenny Family Archives owns about 50 original glass plate negatives of these same images. And there are obvious mistakes, such as a set of images depicting the "Removal of the Cape Yorke meteorite", which show the butchering of a whale instead, as well as the photograph of the US postal carrier, who would not be delivering the mail in Greenland. The Archives staff do not know the source of the incorrect labels. Please ignore them.

Publication Information: University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives,

Finding Aid Author:

Use Restrictions: Although many items from the archives are in the public domain, copyright may be retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. The user is fully responsible for compliance with relevant copyright law.

Form(s)/Genre(s)

• Photographs

Geographic Name(s)

• Barrow (Alaska)

Personal Name(s)

• Stone, Witmer
• Stevenson, Sara Yorke
• Pepper, William
• Culin, Stewart
• McIlhenny, Edward Avery

Subject(s)

• Ethnology -- Indigenous peoples
• Eskimos
• Archaeological expeditions

The standard size records (all documents, photographic prints, and drawings up to 11x17 inches) in this collection have been digitized and may be accessed via this finding aid. Each folder has been scanned as a multi-page PDF; the contents presented in the original order. The PDFs have been labeled with the collection number (PU-Mu. 1073), the box number, and the folder number (i.e. PUMu1073_01_01-001). Oversize plans and drawings, as well as photographic negatives, have not been scanned.

If you wish to publish an image, please contact archives@pennmuseum.org to obtain a publication-quality scan produced by the Penn Museum Photo Studio.

As a historical resource, some items within this collection may include language and imagery which is offensive, oppressive and may cause upset. The use of this language and imagery is not condoned by the Penn Museum, but we are committed to providing equal and open access to this material as well as preservation of the original context of the material. We recognize that we may not always make the right decision and welcome feedback from all sources so that we can learn and adjust our practices. Please contact archives@pennmuseum.org with any questions or concerns.