if i remember correctly, during the 2020 u.s. presidential campaign someone found an ancestor of joe biden's who appeared to be a slaveowner, and conservative media ran with it. in response, liberal media pointed out some flaws with the claim or errors in interpretation that made the evidence less than conclusive. however, neither side (to my knowledge) appears to have explored the question further, which seems like a missed opportunity: biden's ancestors include many white people in pre-civil war maryland, when legal slavery was the norm. even if we can't say whether or not the specific ancestor named back in 2020 owned slaves, does anyone know if other people in his family did?
(this is a repost of a question i asked almost 2 years ago that went unanswered.)
Genealogists Richard Bannerman and Gary Boyd Roberts conducted an exhaustive dive into Biden's ancestry that was published in 2021, and in the course of their research they uncovered two rather distant ancestors of Biden's who did own slaves. They were both great-great-great grandfathers of his in Maryland, named Jesse Robinett and Thomas Randle. Figuring out if one's ancestor owned slaves is aided by the fact that the US Census in 1850 & 1860 also conducted a slave schedule that enumerated the number of slaves an individual possessed, allowing for cross-checking between the census and slave schedule.