Social status of ‘Gente de Color’ buried in St. Peter Street Cemetery in selected years.

Some of the Colonial-era Sacramental Records for New Orleans were destroyed in the 1788 fire, but some funeral records have been preserved in the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.  Beginning in 1772, during the Spanish era, burials of whites (or ‘blancos’) were enumerated in separate registers from people of color (“gente de color”), who are broken down into a number of different categories, including “negro”, “mulato”, “grifo”, “quateron”, and “Yndio”.  Those of both ‘slave’ (“esclavo”) and free (“libre”) status are enumerated in the registers for people of color.  The sacramental records are well-known as a source of genealogical information, but, because so many of the people of color in them are listed without clear surnames, they have often received somewhat less attention from researchers.