It is in my own belief that enumerators did classify Black people according to the way he saw them, and in a lot of ways he also saw skin complexion. As you know according to some definitions, mulatto comes from a Spanish word mule, and a mule in many ways is somewhat a smaller version of a horse. This is just my saying this, and folks can challenge me.. So if I am an enumerator and I happen to come upon let's say free people of color, and that person has very light to high yellow skin, then he looks almost white, but I dare not call him white, so I call him mulatto. Within his family I may see those of darker skins, so here once again to me as an enumerator these persons appear to be black, or Negro. I do not count the fact that even within that home that someone could be part Native American, so why should i being an enumerator give them that part of being a Native American when I can so easily call them as I see it: mulatto, colored, black, negro. In the 1850 and 1860 census of Cabarrus County, N.C. my great grandfather, a free man, Joel House, is identified as mulatto; whereas the person working withhim is Andrew Reed, classified as Black. Strange, uh? Joseph