Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Magnolia, OH

Magnolia is a village that straddles the line between Stark and Carroll counties, lying in Sandy Township on the Stark County side and Rose Township on the Carroll County side, within the Canton-Massillon metropolitan area.

Magnolia was laid out in 1834 by Richard Elson and John W. Smith, taking shape as a canal village during construction of the Sandy and Beaver Canal, which linked Glasgow, Pennsylvania, to the Ohio and Erie Canal at Bolivar.

In 1836 Isaac Miller platted the neighboring village of Downingville, and on February 1, 1846, the two towns merged under the name Magnolia, taken from Magnolia Mills, a local gristmill.

The five-story Magnolia Flouring Mills, built by Richard Elson in 1834 along the canal, remained in the Elson family for 171 years before the Stark County Park District acquired it in 2005, and the mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Sandy and Beaver Canal that created Magnolia ran about 73 miles with 90 locks, but it operated for only a few years before canal operations ended in 1852, when the Cold Run Reservoir Dam near Lisbon broke and flooded homes and businesses.

Magnolia had 1,013 residents at the 2020 census, up slightly from 978 people living in 384 households at the 2010 census.

The village is served by ZIP code 44643 and remains a small agricultural community whose downtown is anchored by the historic mill and a surviving segment of the old canal.