Definition of "quadroon"

There were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the ‘Bhaer-garten’, though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school.

1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 47, in Little Women: […], part second, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers

Diana was a black quadroon, her father being a blackfellow.He was the father of four quadroons who were regarded as half-castes because the lighter part of their mother's blood was Asiatic, and he was only too well aware of what their future would be should he desert them.

1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter V, p. 63; Chapter VIII, p. 120

Before them, with her face upraised,In timid attitude,Like one half curious, half amazed,A Quadroon maiden stood.

1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Quadroon Girl

"What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?" said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.

1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter XVII, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852

The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, […]

1892, Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], page 40