The 47-year-old Peg Leg Pete statue stands at 102 Centre St. in Fernandina Beach. | Amelia Island Tourist Development Council
Published on August 29, 2025 at 2:10 pm
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Peg Leg Pete may be harboring a secret.
The popular 47-year-old wooden statue in front of the Amelia Island Welcome Center in Fernandina Beach may contain human remains.
City officials had planned to replace Pete with a statue carved by a local student. But the city attorney says she heard from “a reliable source” that the statue holds human ashes.
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Now the city’s Historic District Council has to investigate before Peg Leg Pete can move on.
The council met Thursday to discuss a proposal to send the current Peg Leg Pete to the Amelia Island Museum of History for conservation.
A new statue, commissioned by the Fernandina Beach Pirates Club and carved by Jett Paxton, would replace it at 102 Centre St. A 30-inch-tall wrought iron fence would be installed to prevent people from climbing on the statue.
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City Attorney Teresa Prince then revealed the possiblity that there’s more to Peg Leg Pete than meets the eye.
Pirate Club President Joe Brown corroborated the report. He said the club even tried to find relatives of the person whose ashes are inside the statue, but with no luck.
“I’ve seen them. … They are there,” Joe Brown said. “We never really thought much about it. We figured they would stay in Pete and go wherever Pete was.”
Bobby Brown Jr., whose father donated the woodcarved into Peg Leg Pete, disagreed. There are no human remains inside, he said
Brown is unhappy that the statue is going to disappear into a museum after he said the city “failed to maintain it.” He said he remembered his father putting a box of keepsakes in its base — with no ashes.
“That’s wrong. I got the list on my phone here of everything in the box. My father put the box in the ground, so anyone who says otherwise is wrong,” he told the council. “My father is the only living man that’s associated with that pirate.”
Artist Wayne Ervin originally carved Peg Leg Pete from a single 10-foot piece of live oak. Pete was placed on downtown Fernandina Beach’s waterfront in 1978, then later moved next to the visitor’s center.
Members of the historic council were shown images of the current statue. They were told it shows signs of “rapid deterioration” with peeling paint, cracks and rot.
Council Chairperson Arlene Filkoff wondered about whether the current statue is appropriate for the historic downtown. She also wanted to confirm that Peg Leg Pete, which she said has big emotional appeal to people, needs to be removed.
“I think the city’s desires right now are to put something up that is not falling apart, because the current statue, I have been told time and time again is falling apart,” she said. “The Pirates Club believes that they can no longer repair it, that there is not enough left to it to repair. … There is either a new one — new something — or there’s nothing. Is that what I am hearing?”
That is the case here, answered Jacob Platt, the city’s project coordinator,
“It is my understanding that the existing statue is in such bad condition that it’s either going to fall apart or we can move it into a climate-controlled area and preserve it. Those are the only two options,” Platt said.
The Pirate Club president also spoke in favor of moving the current statue to a safer place where it can be conserved. It is so deteriorated that people can “actually stick your finger through it in places,” Joe Brown said. It’s “almost a liability” since it could crumble, fall over and hurt someone who is climbing on it, he said.
“We’re not trying to replace Peg Leg Pete; we’re trying to help preserve him more,” Brown said. “He needs to be retired and taken down. We don’t want to see him crumble and fall. We don’t want to see him get in any worse state. Put him in the museum.”
The club also would maintain the current statue if it goes to the museum, Brown said.
The Pirates Club commissioned the new statue two years ago. Paxton carved it from a huge piece of maple, and artist Julie Delfs painted it.
Paxton, now 17, said he is aware of some of the comments that his statue “doesn’t look like the old one.” But he also is in favor of preserving the original.
“The current pirate won’t be able to stand,” he said at the meeting. “I think we should do as much as we can to preserve him. I don’t think it’s an opinion of whether you like mine or the current one. It’s that we can’t keep the current one up because he is going to fall apart.”
After discussion, the council unanimously tabled the proposal, stating that a new engineering assessment must be done on both statues.
The council requested detailed plans about the full design of the new statue, how it would be anchored on the current base and what would be used to keep people off it. Plus the question of whether there are the ashes inside the old statue.
The City Commission would have the final say on installing the statue.
