How a person’s race or ethnicity is described in each source is rather subjective and will depend upon the language (Spanish, French, or English) of the person making the record and their social background. In some locations at some points in history, determining where a person stood in the hierarchy of races was quite important, and at one time there were dozens of ways to differentiate one’s racial heritage. Here are some of the most common:
- Negro/negra, meaning “black,” indicated someone of solely African ancestry.
- Mestizo/mestiza was either European or African mixed with indigenous blood.
- Moreno/morena referred to someone of mixed blood with darker coloring.
- Mulato/mulata referred to someone of mixed European and African descent.
- Griffe is a French term meaning a person of color with one white grandparent (grifo/grifa in Spanish).
- Pardo/parda seems to have encompassed what people in other locales called quadroon or octoroon, but also those that might more properly be called mulato or mestizo – it appears to have referred to any not-readily identifiable shade of brown.
- Quadroon and octoroon (quarteron/quarterona and octoron/octorona in Spanish) refers to someone with one Black grandparent (1/4) and one Black great-grandparent (1/8), respectively.
- Yellow is used frequently by Anglo-Americans to describe a light-skinned person of mixed race.
- Blanco/blanca literally means “white” in Spanish and referred to someone of pure European ancestry.
On the Gulf Coast, the word “Creole” eventually supplanted most of these terms, referring to anyone of mixed race. (This is not technically a correct use of “creole,” so if you see it in a record before about the time of the Civil War, it may refer to the person having been born in the New World of Old World ancestors.)
For more reading on this subject, see The Spanish Censuses of Pensacola, 1784-1820: A Genealogical Guide to Spanish Pensacola, by William S. Coker and G. Douglas Inglis.