Mark Staniforth 
Lewis Fidge (1827-1895) was born in Bearsted, Kent, England. He was the eldest son of John Fidge and Harriet (née Bourn). He arrived in South Australia as a 12 year old with his parents on board the 541-ton ship Duchess of Northumberland on 19 Dec 1839. The Fidge family moved to the Aldinga area in the 1840s.
Lewis Fidge, aged 23 years, married Elizabeth Knight Winzor (1830-1875), aged 20 years, (she was the oldest daughter of John Winzor and Harriet Constable) at St. Johns Church, Adelaide in 1850. They had six children (four girls and two boys): Hilda, Lewis junior, Eleanor, Wilfred, May and Ada.
Lewis Fidge was a farmer and horse breeder who lived in the Aldinga/Whites Valley area. In 1856 his father John Fidge transferred his half of section 401 at Aldinga to Lewis Fidge. In 1857 Lewis Fidge subdivided part of section 401 into allotments that he called Aldinga East. By 1858, Lewis Fidge also owned five sections of land at Myponga. Over the years he became a significant land-owner in the Aldinga district and more broadly on the Fleurieu Peninsular.
Lewis Fidge purchased section 191 on the Aldinga Plains by 1866 that had previously been owned by Michael Martin (the house at 272 Bayliss Road was named “Somerset House”) and renamed his property Hilda’s Dale Farm presumably after his oldest daughter. Lewis Fidge lived there until his death in 1895 when Hilda Pengilly (née Fidge) inherited 240 acres of land from her father and her husband, blacksmith Thomas Pengilly retired to take up farming on Hilda’s Dale Farm (which later became known as Pengilly Farm).
Lewis Fidge was an active member of the local Aldinga community and he was involved in social, educational, sporting and agricultural activities including re-establishing a ploughing match in Aldinga in 1867 and he was part of a humorous dialogue at the celebration of the Aldinga School examination entitled “The Barrel of Pork”. He was elected as a councilor for the Aldinga District Council on at least six occasions in 1859, 1860, 1866, 1867, 1868 and 1870.
Elizabeth Knight Fidge (née Winzor), aged 45 years, had died on 7 Sept 1875 and the subsequent inquest found that “her system was much weakened by intemperance”.
Lewis Fidge, aged 68 years, died on 22 Dec 1895 at Aldinga. Like his wife he, too, was “of intemperate habits” and had been “in failing health for many years”. Lewis and Elizabeth Fidge were both buried in the Aldinga Wesleyan Methodist (Uniting) Church Cemetery. On his death in 1895 Lewis Fidge left an estate worth £10,400 that included owning more than 20 sections of land.
Elizabeth Knight Fidge gravestone and Lewis Fidge gravestone (photos by Mark Staniforth)
Main Image: Aldinga Pioneers with Lewis Fidge seated on the left in the middle row (photo dated to the first half of 1886) (courtesy of the Willunga National Trust).
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