Cooksville Creek: A History of Saul’s Creek and the Saul Family in Port Credit

We now know it as Cooksville Creek, but from the 1800s to the 1960s it was known as Saul’s Creek. A lively little waterway, it meandered through lands owned by Hugh W. Saul.

The creek runs 16 km from near Bristol Road to Lake Ontario. This watershed has been home to 594 distinct species (3 species of aquatic plants, 18 ferns, 50 grasses, 297 herbs, 101 shrubs, 64 trees, 14 vines, 5 amphibians, 95 birds, 13 mammals, 1 crayfish, and 3 reptiles). Only 1 fish remains, the white sucker (previously the creek contained salmon, trout, dace, darters, chub, and emerald shiners).

Hugh W. Saul was born in Ireland around 1834. It isn’t known when he migrated to Canada West (as Ontario was called then), but by 1861 he had a farm on Lot 11 or 12, Concession 2. He was living alone, and had acquired 50 acres, valued then at $2000, making him a reasonably comfortable farmer for the time and the area.

His farm had 35 acres under cultivation around the Creek, with 15 acres of wood. He grew fall and spring wheat, barley, rye, peas, oats, buckwheat, corn, potatoes, turnips, carrots, beans, hops and harvested hay. He also grew mangelwurzel, a type of root vegetable used to feed cattle. Saul farmed that piece of land until at least 1874.

Despite being a member of the Church of England, he married an Irish Roman Catholic girl named Elizabeth or Eliza Collins, who was born between 1836 and 1841. They had three daughters, all born in Port Credit near the Creek: Margaret in 1862, Elizabeth in 1864/1865, and Anne Maria in 1875. All were baptized at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Dixie, Toronto Township.

The eldest daughter, Margaret, married in 1889 to a farmer names Charles Webster. They had four children together. Margaret died in Bobcaygeon in 1940.

By 1891 Eliza was a widow, living with two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne Maria. Elizabeth later married a farmer named John Mahar. The youngest daughter, Anne Maria married a Toronto merchant and had three daughters. Elizabeth became a seamstress and married another John Mahar on April 20th, 1904. She died in Toronto in 1936.

Eliza Collins Saul died in 1923 is buried at Mount Pearce Catholic Cemetery on Cawthra Road (tomb 243065). The date of Hugh Saul’s death and his place of burial are unknown, but the lovely little waterway named after him continues to live on.