Thomas Cooch

Descendants

Died 1699 in Cabra Castle, County Cavan, Ireland

Biography

Colonel Thomas Cooch, first owner of Cabra Estate, married Elizabeth Mervyn, sister of Audley Mervyn (Speaker of the Irish House of Commons), and they had an only daughter and heiress, Elizabeth.

He died in 1699.

Research Notes

The history on the Cabra Castle Website differs from Burke's Landed Gentry (1912). Cabra castle, and the land surrounding it, is believed to have belonged to the O'Reilly family until it was confiscated in the mid-17th Century by Cromwell's orders and given to Colonel Thomas Cooch, grandson to Sir Thomas Cooch KC; who had migrated to Donegal in the 17th Century, having been granted 1,000 acres by James I.

Colonel Thomas Cooch, first owner of Cabra Estate, married Elizabeth Mervyn, sister of Audley Mervyn (Speaker of the Irish House of Commons), and they had an only daughter and heiress, Elizabeth.

Her first marriage ended when she was widowed in 1685 and Elizabeth then married Joseph Pratt, who lived not far off at Jaradice, Co. Meath, a property which he received when he migrated from Leicestershire to Ireland in 1641. This marriage (which was also Joseph Pratt's second) took place in 1686 and a son, Mervyn Pratt, was born in 1687.

At this time, Colonel T. Cooch was still the owner of Cabra but in 1695, he made a will leaving all his property to Mervyn Pratt, his grandson, and when the Colonel died in 1699, the Cabra property came into the possession of the Pratt family.

Sources

• A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Ireland by Sir Bernard Burke and Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Publication date 1912, Family: Pratt of Cabra Castle
• https://www.cabracastle.com/history