WASHINGTON - Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.
Story But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost
no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother
owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.
The records - which had never been addressed publicly by the
Illinois senator or his relatives - were first noted in an ancestry
report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library
of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. The report, on
Reitwiesner's Web site, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft"
- one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.
According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great
grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were
recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show
that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary
Duvall, also owned two slaves.
He Sun retraced much of Reitwiesner's work, using census information
available on the Web site ancestry.com and documents retrieved by the
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, among other sources.
The records show that Overall, then 30, owned a 15-year-old black
female and a 25-year-old black male, while Mary Duvall, his
mother-in-law, owned a 60-year-old black man and a 58-year-old black
woman. (Slaves are listed in the 1850 census by owner, age, "sex," and
"colour," not by name.)
An Obama spokesman did not dispute the information and said that the senator's ancestors "are representative of America."
"While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in
the Civil War," campaign spokesman Bill Burton said last night. "And it
is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner
would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would
grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States."
The research traces the Duvalls to Mareen Duvall, a major land
owner in Anne Arundel County in the 1600s. The inventory of his estate
in 1694 names 18 slaves, according to a family history published in
1952.