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One person, who was a small child at the time the town site was surveyed and officially named, gives the version of the naming that I have come to believe true.
She lived in the immediate neighborhood where a commissioner charged with the duty of selecting and naming the town lived.
Mrs. Maggie Couey, nee Dixon, was acquainted with her neighbor, Commissioner Norborn Young, and with Miss Harper, whom he later married. Mrs. Couey states that she was always told that Mr. Young not only participated in the selection of the town site, but aided somewhat in the actual survey. This was in 1853 or 1854.
Mrs. Couey remembered that Mrs. Norborn Young was a Miss Harper, and at the time of Magnolia's founding, affianced to Mr. Young. Norborn Young asked Miss Harper to suggest a name for the new town, and it is reported that she suggested "Peolia," "Peoria," or some similar sounding name. Mr. Young didn't understand her, and the commissioners were not greatly concerned with the name, and the town was named "Magnolia." Needless to say, there are many other "authentic" origins which vary greatly from the above, most of them centering around magnolia trees.
But the fact is that these trees are not native of these latitudes, and only the bay tree, a near relation of the magnolia, is; but the bay tends to grow in low, wet, marshy places, and would not likely have been found anywhere near the center of the town.
- Just south of Magnolia, and now almost within the city limits, U. S.
Highway 79, the erstwhile Military road and Indian trail, crosses a small
stream called Nations Creek. It was named for one of the very earliest
settlers in the county, whose home was near the banks of this creek perhaps
as early as 1838 or 1839. There is a record of the members of the household
killing a bear here which had been discovered by the children a few hundred
feet from the house. Prodded and tormented by the dog so as to cause it
to get near the house, it was shot and killed from that convenient point.
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