Duke’s Mayonnaise

“The Queen of Mayonnaise in the South.” The South’s favorite mayonnaise was created by Eugenia Thomas, born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1881. At the age of 19, she married Harry Duke and moved to the city of Greenville, South Carolina. After moving to Greenville, she started selling sandwiches with her homemade mayonnaise to soldiers at Fort Sevier. After years of selling her sandwiches she bottled her mayonnaise and sold it as well. Sales took off and she decided to step away from retailing sandwiches to sell her mayonnaise exclusively. In 1926, the demand grew so great that Duke moved from her kitchen into a processing plant.