 According to the law of the colony and the principle of "partus sequitur ventrem", by which children in the colony took the status of their mothers, the mixed-race children of these unions and marriages were born free because the mothers were free.While they were subject to discrimination, gaining free status helped these families get ahead in society.Heinegg noted that many of these free people of color migrated west with white neighbors and settled on the frontiers of Virginia, what became West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, as these areas were less bound by racial caste than were the Tidewater plantation areas.