The first known mention in print of the Dominickers is an article in Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, published by the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.
The article "Ponce de Leon" identifies the Dominickers as being mixed-race descendants of the widow of a pre-Civil War plantation owner and one of her black slaves, by whom she had five children.
These typescripts go into further detail than the published article on the appearance and behavior of the Dominickers, saying that the local people described them as "sensitive, treacherous, and vindictive" and "pathetically ignorant."
[2] One article notes that Dominickers were "treated with the same courtesy that a Negro receives—never served at a public fountain nor introduced to a white person."
"[2] In contrast to these descriptions, photographs of known Dominickers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries show that their appearance ranged from fair-complected to swarthy, but not "Negroid," as claimed; the women, especially, seem to have had an olive-skinned, wavy-haired "Mediterranean" look.
There may have originally been several distinct mixed-race families in the area, with various combinations of white, black, and Indian ancestry, whose descendants intermarried.
"[2] For example, one account pieced from various sources says that in the early nineteenth century, Jim Crow (no connection with the later segregation laws called by that name), an "Indian prince" and son of Chief Sam Story of the local Euchee Indians, married Harriet, a beautiful, "more than two-thirds white" enslaved house servant owned by a local white family.
When the Euchee migrated to southern Florida in 1832, shortly after Sam Story's death, Harriet (who may have been her owner's daughter) and the baby stayed behind with the white family.
[2] Many families in the Holmes County area claim Native American descent, especially from the Creek Indians, a larger nation of the Southeast with whom the Euchee were once affiliated.
The 1950 federal census instructed enumerators to make note of local populations of mixed white, black, and Indian ancestry in the eastern United States.
[citation needed] In 1956, a United States Public Health Service worker, who had tabulated the 1950 census findings, made a brief visit to the area.