[1] Espaillat was the Medic and Main Surgeon of the infantry troops in Santiago, La Vega, Monte Christi, and Puerto Plata.
[1] Espaillat fled the island in 1805 with his family, after the invasion of Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Santo Domingo, fleeing the massacres against the Dominicans committed by the Haitian army, moving to Aguadilla, in the Western side of the Spanish Captaincy General of Puerto Rico.
[1][2] His father-in-law, the Aragonese don Francisco Antonio Velilla y Torres, was the Lieutenant-Governor of the Northern region until his death in 1781, an office that Espaillat later held from 1783 to 1786.
Velilla also was the Administrator of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Santiago from 1770 till his death, and was succeeded per Governor Isidro Peralta's decree by Espaillat.
Velilla had a considerable fortune and yeld political and social-economical power, and he married a woman from the Criollo elite: doña María Sánchez y Firpo (whose father was a Spaniard, and her maternal grandfather was Italian).