1894
The Smokehouse
Obediah Williamson plants his first half-acre of cayenne behind the family smokehouse on the south face of Black Mountain. He sells his first dozen bottles to a general store in Asheville for sixty-three cents.
Heritage
131 YEARS.
FIVE GENERATIONS.
ONE FAMILY.
Two world wars. The Great Depression. The dust bowl. The 2008 financial crisis. Through every storm this country has thrown at it, one family has kept the kettles hot.
1898
The Great Blizzard
When the rail line froze for nine weeks, Obediah and his eldest son drove an oxen cart 41 miles over the Swannanoa pass to deliver eight crates of sauce to a buyer in Tennessee. They returned with the empty crates, the cash, and most of their toes.
1917
The Great War
Two of the four Williamson sons enlist. Production drops by half. The remaining two double their hours and switch to a smaller bottle to stretch the year's harvest. Every shipment goes out on time.
1929
The Crash
When Wall Street collapsed, the Williamsons stopped paying themselves. They did not stop paying their bottling crew. Half the family slept in the barn that winter. Every shipment went out on time.
1942
World War II
Glass was rationed. The Williamsons re-used returned bottles, hand-washed in the mash room. The U.S. Army ordered 14,000 cases for the Pacific theater — sailors said it was the only thing that made K-rations edible.
1971
The Bottling Line
Jack Williamson Sr. — fourth-generation — installs the first mechanical bottler. Production triples. He keeps every employee, retraining them on the new line rather than letting a single one go.
2008
The Financial Crisis
When grocery orders dried up, Kaniac pivoted hard to direct-to-consumer mail orders. Mae Williamson — then 72 — personally answered every customer letter for fourteen straight months.
Today
Jack Williamson
Fifth-generation Jack runs the operation today, with the same crew, in the same barn, with the same recipe. The family is still here. The sauce is still here. We plan to be here for the sixth generation, the seventh, and as far past that as the mountain will let us.
