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MAGNOLIA, TEXAS. Magnolia
is on the Missouri Pacific line at the junction of Farm roads 1774 and 1488,
twenty miles southwest of Conroe in southwestern Montgomery County. It was
first settled in the late 1840s and named
Mink's Prairie for one of the early settlers;
its name had been shortened to Mink by 1850. On September 3, 1885, a post
office was established at Mink with John F. Dobbs as postmaster. The
community's population was twenty-five by 1900. In 1902, when the
International-Great Northern Railroad built a line through the area, the town
moved to its present location. The railroad named it Melton, in honor of Jim
Melton, a large landowner in the county, but the United States Post Office
confused it with Milton. Consequently it was renamed Magnolia for the magnolia
trees in the bottoms of adjacent Mill Creek and granted a post office in 1903.
By 1915 Magnolia had a
population of 150 and telephone service, a sawmill, Baptist and Methodist
churches, two general stores, a physician, a railroad and express agent, a
hotel, a livery and real estate office, a cattle dealer, a druggist, a
confectionery, a cotton gin, and a blacksmith. By the 1940s the Magnolia
oilfield had been established a mile east of town, and the community's
population had increased to 400. At this time Magnolia had a station on the
International-Great Northern Railroad, a post office, a cemetery, two churches,
two schools, ten businesses, and forty-five dwellings. The Grogan-Cochran lumber
camp was located two miles southeast of town.
By 1962 the Missouri
Pacific had taken over the railroad line, and Magnolia had two high schools, a
church, a landing field, and a small collection of dwellings within several
miles of the town center. Magnolia was incorporated on September 28, 1968. Its
population grew in the 1960s and early 1970s, reaching 1,150 by 1971. By 1980
its population had declined to 867, but by 1989 it had grown to 1,132, and the
town had 124 businesses. By 1990 the population of Magnolia had declined again
to 940.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Marker Files,
Texas Historical Commission, Austin. W. N. Martin, A History of Montgomery,
Texas (M.A. thesis, Sam Houston State Teachers College, 1950). Montgomery County
Genealogical Society, Montgomery County History, (Winston-Salem, North
Carolina: Hunter, 1981).
Will Branch
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