More Light on J. M. Salmon's background

Robert Langdon of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National University, has this to say of John Mortimer Salmon’s origins: The South Seas Salmons are descended from a family of French Jews who fled to England during the French Revolution. One member of the family, John, settled at Hastings, Sussex, with his wife Rebecca. John and Rebecca Salmon had eight children—four sons and four daughters. Three of the sons emigrated to California about 1839 and went into business there. Their names were Alexandre, Julius William and Mortimer. Mortimer subsequently went to Russia, married a rich countess and eventually returned to England. Alexandre went to Tahiti in 1840 in a ship commanded by a friend and associate of his, Captain George Dunnett. And Julius William remained in California where, in 1847, he married Dunnett’s sister, Esther. Meanwhile, in the early part of 1842, Alexandre married the Tahitian chiefess Arii Taimai, and Dunnett married a friend of hers called Tua. Both had dispensations to do so from Queen Pomare IV, as marriages between Tahitians and Europeans were then forbidden by law.

Alexandre Salmon and Arii Taimai had nine children.

The eldest of these was a daughter, Titaua. She married the Scottish merchant, John Brander, who established himself in Tahiti in 1851. The seventh child, another daughter, Marau, became the wife in 1875 of a Tahitian prince, who, two years later, became King Pomare V. Alexandre Salmon thus fathered a girl who became queen of Tahiti — indeed, she was the last queen, for Pomare V abdicated in 1880. Alexandre Salmon also prospered as a businessman.

As for Alexandre's brother, Julius William, he, too, went to Tahiti after his marriage to Esther Dunnett.

His wife gave birth to four children, two girls and two boys. One of the boys was John Mortimer Salmon, the subject of W. H. Percival's story, who seems to have been named after his grandfather in Sussex and his uncle in Russia. John Mortimer was possibly educated outside Tahiti; but, as Percival tells in his story, he was sent to Rarotonga in 1874 as an agent for John Brander, whose relative he was by marriage. Having observed the business and social success of his uncle Alexandre through marrying an island chiefess, John Mortimer may well have deliberately set out to marry the chiefly Mereana . . . which, at any rate, he did.