Since 1971 Kelligrews has been part of the incorporated community of Conception Bay South. Local tradition associates the name with a seventeenth-century pirate, Captain Kelly (see KELLYS ISLAND), surmising that it is a corruption of Kelly's Grove. However, some scholars have suggested that the community takes its name from Kelligrew's Point, after a Conception Bay merchant family. Although a few fishing families settled c.1800, the area did not have a substantial permanent population before the 1820s, with the arrival of families from older fishing communities (especially Port de Grave), some of whom had had gardens in the area.