Alexander Salmon

Alexander Salmon (1820 – 6 August 1866) was an English merchant who was the first Jew to reside in Tahiti. He became secretary to Queen Pōmare IV and married her adopted half-sister. Through his daughter's marriage to John Brander his family formed part of the influential Salmon/Brander Clan of Tahiti.

Salmon was born Alexander Solomon in 1820 in Hastings, England. While often described as "the scion of a British Jewish banking family", his background was quite different. His father, John Solomon, was a fruiterer or greengrocer selling from a store in Piccadilly. He improved his background when he arrived in Tahiti at age 19 in 1841. This is not surprising when it is considered how he was treated by British and European visitors to Tahiti. An example of this was Captain Henry Byam Martin, commander of HMS Grampus, who in 1847 described Salmon as, "... a low swindling bankrupt Jew from London." On his mother Rebecca's side, Alexander was a grandson of a renowned Jewish miniaturist artist, Solomon Polack. His maternal uncle was Joel Samuel Polack.

In January 1842, Salmon married Princess Oehau, Ari'i Ari'ioehau Ari'ita'ima'i Hinari'i (1824 – 24 June 1897), later given the title ari'i. She was the adoptive daughter of King Pōmare II's widow, the mother of Pōmare III and Pōmare IV. Considered one of the highest ranking chiefesses in the land, she was head of the Teva clan, the traditional rivals of the Pōmare family, and descended from Chief Amo and Queen Purea who received the first European explorer to Tahiti Samuel Wallis in 1767. In 1846, she was considered a rival candidate to the Tahitian throne by the French governor Armand Joseph Bruat in the event that Queen Pōmare IV did not to return from her self-imposed exile to Raiatea and comply with a French protectorate over Tahiti.

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