Magnolia Cemetery was established by municipal ordinance on an initial parcel outside the city limits in 1836 as Mobile's
New Burial Ground. The cemetery grew to its present size with the addition of the numerous new sections. The Coal Handlers Union, Colored Benevolent Institution Number One, Cotton Weighers Society, Draymens Relief Society, Homeless Seamen, Independent Ladies Mill and Timber Association, and the Protestant Orphan Asylum Society were among those organizations to take advantage of this policy until it was ended in 1873. It was initially called Soldiers Rest. The cemetery as a whole was renamed Magnolia Cemetery on January 15, 1867. The elevated and highly desirable plots in this section eventually became the resting place for both Jews and
Gentiles, and came to contain some of the more elaborate sculptures and mausolea in the entire cemetery. In 1984 the Historic Mobile Preservation Society formed the Friends of Magnolia Cemetery as a non-profit corporation. The goals of the Friends of Magnolia Cemetery included the establishment of
perpetual care for the plots, cleaning up the cemetery, removing or improving the existing vegetation, improving maintenance, restoring historic monuments and ironwork, hiring a superintendent for day-to-day operations, and surrounding the site with a new wrought iron fence. The new fence was conceived and designed by local architects
Arch R. Winter and Thomas F. Karwinski. Along with its notable monuments and the prominent individuals interred, the efforts by the Friends of Magnolia Cemetery helped lead to the cemetery being placed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1986. In 1997 local veterans requested that the Mobile National Cemetery section be reopened to burial with an expansion into the last city owned piece of property at the southeast corner of Ann and Virginia Streets. Upon investigation with ground-penetrating radar it was re-discovered that the proposed area of expansion had at one time been used as a
paupers field for indigent burials. Although these remains had been relocated to another location years earlier, Veterans Administration rules would not permit the area to be reused for veteran burials. ==Notable monuments==