Tomás O'Neill y Salmón (5 October 1764[1] – unknown) was a Spanish colonial governor of the western Caribbean archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, today part of modern Colombia.
O'Neill was the son of an Irish father and Canarian mother,[2] and bilingual in Spanish and English, which aided his later career.
He became the interpreter on board the Spanish expedition sent to expel the English-speaking population of the archipelago in 1789, having arrived in the New World nine years earlier [3] aged 16.
Rather than expelling them as agreed to by the colonial powers under the Treat of Versailles and the Convention of 1786, he was instrumental in not only helping secure the position of the English-speaking Protestant inhabitants, but becoming their governor, and having a significant impact on the islands at a pivotal time in their history.
[2] Patrick had close connections with the network of Irish merchants operating from Tenerife, including the wealthy Cologan family.
[8] Both of O'Neill´s parents died when he and his brother Enrique were young, and both were raised on Tenerife by their maternal aunt[3] on his mother's side of the family, María Salmón.
[12] It seems that O'Neill did more than interpret and in fact assisted in the mediation process between the Spanish Crown forces and the Islanders.
His detractors have accused him of being an opportunist and of essentially being an eighteenth-century lobbyist, having a habit of writing letters requesting appointments for himself and promotion.
He was not dogmatic in imposing Catholicism, taking a soft approach to the issue, preferring islanders as "buenos herejes no como malos católicos".
In 1797 O'Neill, asked the Spanish Crown to send two Catholic priests for the attention of the faithful in San Andres.
It has been argued that O'Neill lobbied for the removal of the islands from the jurisdiction of Guatemala to that of Nueva Granada (Cartagena) in order to keep authorities above him at a distance.
The O'Neill brothers served the Spanish Crown in Cartagena de Indias and "became part of the elite of the city through two fortunate marriages".
[11] Unfortunately, Tomás's marriage ended when his wife died on San Andrés; he lamented in a letter in 1797 that there was no priest on the island to give her the last rites.
[22] They had daughter, Ann Eliza[15] (1817-1862) who married Philip Beekman Jr, a man who also would have a significant impact on the history of the Archipelago.
Enrique it seems made a good marriage in Cartagena,[11] to María Melchora de la Torre y Baloco in 1803.
We also know that in 1822 Tomás O'Neill was on the island council,[17] and that one of the signatures of a document proclaiming the archipelago's loyalty to Colombia that year was his.