[3][5] Magnolia Cemetery was established by municipal ordinance on an initial 36 acres (15 ha) parcel outside the city limits in 1836 as Mobile's New Burial Ground.

[4] In 1846 the city began to grant free burial plots within the cemetery to civic, labor, and religious organizations.

[3] On August 20, 1868 the 7 acres (2.8 ha) Goldsmith and Frohlichstein extension was added to the cemetery, adjacent to the Jewish Rest section.

[9] 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.

1913 saw the addition of a set of monumental twin Mediterranean Revival gatehouses and wrought iron gates at the George Street entrance.

[10] 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.

[10] 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.

[10] 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.

[5] The LeBlanc memorial is dedicated to two sisters who died in infancy and whose grandmother commissioned the small Neo-Renaissance statuary of two putti leaning together over a stone marker.

[11] The annex also contains the graves of thirteen Apaches who were held as prisoners nearby at Mount Vernon Arsenal between 1887 and 1894 by the Federal government.