Celeste Lemelle’s son Ferdinand David Baquie, born in New Orleans on Oct. 10, 1837, was listed as “mulatto” in the 1870 census. But in 1880, he and his entire family were listed as white.

Noblemen, enslaved people, freedom fighters, slaveholders: what the complex family tree of the first American pontiff reveals. Finding the Pope’s Roots By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

1900 U.S. Census records which depict the pope’s maternal grandparents and his two aunts, Irma and Margaret. The family’s race is listed as “B,” which meant Black.