Thanks for asking! We actually started digging into this after writing the article because we were curious too.

The interesting thing is that there appears to be very little documented historical evidence that Captain Kelly was a real person. Most of what we know comes from local tradition and folklore, not surviving colonial records.

According to the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, Kelly’s Island is traditionally said to have been named after a 17th-century Cornish pirate who supposedly used the island as a rendezvous point. Local legend also says he buried treasure there, and some stories even claim it was secretly recovered around 1920. However, there are no known contemporary records that confirm Captain Kelly himself or these events.

Historians generally consider Pirate Kelly to be part of Newfoundland folklore rather than established history. It’s also possible that the legend became intertwined with the very real pirate activity of Peter Easton, who is well documented in Conception Bay around 1611–1612 and is known to have used Kelly’s Island as a strategic base. Over the centuries, stories may have merged or evolved.

We’ve become intrigued by the mystery as well, and we plan to do a deeper dive into Kelly’s Island to see whether any overlooked records, newspaper accounts, family histories, or archival documents can shed more light on the legend. If we uncover anything substantial, we’ll definitely turn it into a ShareNL feature!