Martin, I found the reference to Hamilton intriguing, so I spent the entire afternoon following this lead. I found the following website to be the most informative, and possibly the best researched one...

http://www.wnyc.org/books/29537

It is an overview of a book (biography)"Alexander Hamilton"
by Ron Chernow - Penguin Press in 2004. ISBN: 1-5942-0009-2

About 1/3 of the way down this most fascinating story is this:

A persistent mythology in the Caribbean asserts that Rachel (Alexander's mother) was partly black, making Alexander Hamilton a quadroon or an octoroon. In this obsessively race-conscious society, however, Rachel was invariably listed among the whites on local tax rolls. Her identification as someone of mixed race has no basis in verifiable fact. (See pages 734-35.) The folklore that Hamilton was mulatto probably arose from the incontestable truth that many, if not most, illegitimate children in the West Indies bore mixed blood. At the time of Rachel's birth, the four thousand slaves on Nevis outnumbered whites by a ratio of four to one, making inequitable carnal relations between black slaves and white masters a dreadful commonplace.

I believe I will have to order this book from Amazon - if my library doesn't have a copy!

Brew