Magnolia

How Magnolia began

Magnolia was laid out in 1834 by Richard Elson and John W. Smith in Sandy Township and took its name from their Magnolia Mills; Elson and Smith started the water-powered mill that year and the Elson family kept milling there into the 1900s. The county line splits the old village: the Carroll County half was laid out by Isaac Miller as Downingville in 1836 (Perrin's 1881 history says he named it for his son-in-law James Downing; Wikipedia says for the Downes family), and the two halves merged on February 1, 1846. Isaac Miller had kept a tavern and ferry at the Sandy Creek crossing here since about 1806, and the village had a brief boom while the Sandy & Beaver Canal ran. Magnolia counted 431 residents in 1900, peaked at 1,064 in 1970 and had 1,013 in 2020; the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District's Magnolia Levee protects it from flooding tied to the Bolivar Dam.

Settled 1834, platted 1834 (Magnolia); 1836 (Downingville), incorporated merged February 1, 1846, by Richard Elson and John W. Smith (Magnolia); Isaac Miller (Downingville).

Where the name comes from

The village took its name from Magnolia Mills, the gristmill Richard Elson and John W. Smith built when they laid out the village in 1834. The separate settlement of Downingville, later merged into Magnolia, was named for the Downes family, early pioneers who had come from Ireland and England.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site is recorded inside Magnolia itself. Perrin's 1881 county history says the old Tuscarawas trail ran west along the valley of the Big Sandy through this township, that Indian Run, flowing through the middle of Sandy Township, was a favorite camping place of Native people who made the neighborhood a home or hunting ground, and that Wyandot families camped by a stream just east of the Sandy Township line until they left in the fall of 1811. The land was ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Tuscarawas trail along the Big Sandy valley (trail) — Sandy Township, along Big Sandy Creek past the future site of Magnolia, before 1800 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1786 — Surveyors under Thomas Hutchins complete the Geographer's Line near the future site of Magnolia in September, marking the western terminus of the Seven Ranges, the first systematically surveyed public land in the United States.
2. 1806 — Isaac Miller settles on the west side of Big Sandy Creek close to the future site of Magnolia, where he opens a house of entertainment and runs a ferry for emigrants crossing the creek.
3. 1809 — The first schoolhouse in Sandy Township is built on the W. H. Knotts farm west of Magnolia (Perrin says 1809 or 1810), with William Lee as first teacher.
4. 1814 — Isaac Miller builds a toll bridge over the Sandy beside his ferry, the first bridge across that creek.
5. 1834 — Richard Elson and John W. Smith lay out the village of Magnolia in Sandy Township, named for their Magnolia Mills gristmill.
6. 1834 — Patrick Call builds the village iron foundry near the present Elson residence (Perrin says 1834 or 1835); he moves it to Waynesburg in 1845.
7. 1834 — Elson & Smith establish their water-power mill, later the A. R. Elson mill with saw mill and woodworking machinery, which Perrin calls one of the finest water-power plants in that part of Ohio.
8. 1836 — Isaac Miller platts the separate settlement of Downingville in Rose Township.
9. 1846 — Magnolia and Downingville merge into a single village on February 1.
10. 1881 — Perrin's county history counts about 300 people in Magnolia, with two churches (United Brethren in Christ and Evangelical Lutheran), hotels, a harness maker and John G. Croxton remembered as keeper of the first store.
11. 1900 — The census counts 431 residents in Magnolia.
12. 1915 — The A.R. Elson Co. operates as merchant millers, dealing in lumber and building materials, an advertisement documents.
13. 1930 — The census counts 685 residents in Magnolia, 819 in 1940 and 901 in 1950.
14. 1970 — Magnolia reaches its census peak of 1,064 residents, then falls to 937 by 1990 before recovering to 1,013 in 2020.

Stories

Two villages merge, and a mill gives the combined town its name

Magnolia exists today because two separate settlements, platted two years apart by different founders, eventually decided to become one town. Richard Elson and John W. Smith laid out Magnolia in Sandy Township in 1834, naming it for the gristmill, Magnolia Mills, that anchored their settlement. Two years later, Isaac Miller platted a second community nearby in Rose Township, Downingville, named for the Downes family of early Irish and English settlers. Rather than compete indefinitely as neighboring rivals, the two merged into a single Magnolia on February 1, 1846, with the mill-derived name winning out over the family name. The Elson family's milling business outlasted the merger by decades -- an advertisement from 1915 shows the A.R. Elson Co. still operating as merchant millers and lumber dealers, eighty years after Richard Elson's original mill gave the village its name.

The ferryman who outran a Wyandot war party

Isaac Miller, who ran the tavern and ferry at the Sandy crossing by Magnolia from about 1806, had earlier been one of five scouts sent out by Gen. Anthony Wayne's army in the spring of 1793: Capt. James Downing, Miller, John Cuppy, George Foulke and a man named Dillow. As Perrin tells it from Miller's own account, about twenty Wyandot warriors found their camp near present Minerva and split into two parties to attack it. The scouts scattered, Downing and Cuppy fighting a running retreat, while Miller, sure he could outrun the whole party, yelled a taunt to draw them after him and then cleared a creek in a leap. He ran two miles without looking back, slept that night under a fallen chestnut and rejoined the others at the river two days later. Foulke, hiding nearby, watched the Wyandots bury at least two of their dead, one near the site of a house later built in Minerva. All five lived to tell it, and three of them later settled in Sandy Township.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Magnolia Village96% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• East Sparta Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-08-12: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 14 of 14 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-05-08

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