Career
Sheila NaGeira is sometimes claimed to have been the island"s first schoolteacher, midwife and herbal doctor. She was captured by a Dutch privateer in the English Channel and subsequently rescued by Peter Easton, an English privateer loyal to Queen Elizabeth I. At the time Easton"s fleet was on their way to Newfoundland to protect the English fishing fleet there and took with them their rescued prisoners to Newfoundland. Pike had left Easton"s employ and they both settled in a place called Mosquito Cove, now Bristol"s Hope.
In 1611 they moved to nearby Carbonear to escape the return of Easton who by that time became a much feared pirate under the reign of James I.
lieutenant has been suggested that NaGeira is an epithet meaning the beautiful, and that her actual name was O"Connor the daughter of a claimant to the Irish throne of Connacht.
There are no historical records of a Sheila NaGeira existing, let alone having given birth, or being married to a Gilbert Pike. The Canadian Conservation Institute in 1982 had confirmed that the alleged burial place for Sheila showed a crumbling stone of a John Pike, but no mention of a Sheila.
The mythology of Shelia NaGeira seems to have first been recorded in print at the beginning of the twentieth century, there is no mention of her in any of the histories of the island or its folk beliefs prior to that. lieutenant is possible a local legend pre-dates that, but no evidence has been found to date.