Diprose family


Bass View, L Diprose's home at Yolla (AOT, PH30/1/5374)

Thomas (1781–1865) and Elizabeth (1782–1868), free immigrants from Kent, arrived in Hobart Town in 1823 with their eight children, aged between two and eighteen years. Their youngest son was born there four months later. Thomas obtained a land grant, initially of 500 acres, at Diprose Lagoon, Epping. After about twenty years Thomas and Elizabeth moved to Launceston.

Their descendants farmed across much of northern Tasmania. Some were tenant farmers for a time. Many Diproses and their spouses moved on to the heavily-forested basalt lands of the north-east and north-west where they bought land. These pioneering families cleared large areas in these regions to establish their farms. In the 1860s some settled in the newly-opened Scottsdale area and later in the nineteenth century in the Ringarooma and Legerwood areas in the north-east and Barrington–Sheffield, Yolla and Sisters Creek areas in the north-west. More recent generations have had a wide range of occupations. Thomas and Elizabeth were Baptists and many of their descendants have continued the strong nonconformist tradition.

Further reading: French & Badcock Family Book Committee, Go... Be fruitful and multiply, Hobart, 1989; J Doggett & E Parkes, history of Diprose family, forthcoming.

Elizabeth Parkes