Little Details

Edit: I got my answer. Thanks for the confirmation everyone!

Character is a 13 year old bi-racial boy.
His mother is a dark-skinned African-American.
He's never met his father.
The father is on the darker side of Caucasian, black hair, tans easily (mostly Welsh, and a little Irish and a little American Indian).
The character's spent his entire life in East St Louis (population 97% African-American).
And his mother kept his hair in dreads.

Would it be reasonable for the character to have assumed that his father was a light-skinned African-American rather than a white man?

[My ex-s kids are bi-racial and look bi-racial but their father was a pale red-head.]

To get right to it, I have a character - living in England during the 1940s - with the title of Horologist. I've found a few scattered university courses in Horology, but all of these offered a BTEC qualification, which I don't suppose was by any means around at the time. 
What would he have studied in order to gain such a title? More specifically, how might he have managed to get a job, in Horology, in a Museum? 

Thanks!

Is there a special industrial/official term for cotton that has been seperated from the boll but has not yet been woven into a fabric? Or to word it another way, what do you call that little bundle of cotton fiber taken from the boll?