8th Great Grandparents; Austin "the settler" Cooper (1621-1695) and Mary Dodson (1621-1653)

Austin Cooper (1621-1695)

Austin Cooper was born about 1621, in Byfleet, Surrey. He married Mary Dodson, daughter of Henry Dodson, in Hampton Court, London. They had 16 children during their marriage. He died about 1695, in Wicklow, Ireland, at the age of 74.  He inherited paternal property at Byfleet, Surrey. His father held an appointment at the Court of King Charles I. Austin Cooper also went by the nick-name of 'Austin the Settler'. After the execution of Charles 1, his estates were forfeited and so he sold all his possessions in England for £1,500 and emigrated to Ireland. He lived in 1661 at Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland. He was employed by Primate Boyle in laying out the gardens at Blessington ('These gardens were laid down by an English gentleman who abandoned his estate at Byfleet, Sussex to escape the persecution of Cromwell'). Following some butchery and confiscations of Roman Catholic estates he was given the lands of Killanure Castle, County Tipperary and his descendants lived there until 1962 when they returned to the UK.  According to Burke's Family Records; he was famed for “famed for his feats of strength such as taking two men, one in each hand, slapping them together and throwing them on a dunghill! … If he held on to a cart, the horse could not go … taking a man in one hand, pulling down his breeches with the other then buttling his backside in the River Weye …”  

An interesting account of the family's aquisition of Killanure Castle is on the blog Tall Tales from the Trees. 

Mary Dodson (1628-1653)

Mary Dodson was born in 1628 in London, London, England, the daughter of ELLEN and Andrew. She married Austin Damon "the settler" Cooper in 1643 in her hometown. They had eight children. She died as a young mother in 1653 in her hometown.