Biden’s great-grandfather, Joseph J. Biden, enslaved people.

There is no evidence that former Vice President, Joe Biden's family were the slave owners.

There is no evidence that former Vice President, Joe Biden's family were the slave owners.A story circulating on social media claims that Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., Joe Biden's father was a slave owner. However, Biden's ancestors or relatives were not slave owners. Politifact compiled data on Biden's family and his ancestors from genealogist Megan Smolenyak. She has extensively written about the Biden family tree.

Joe Biden Sr., Joe Biden's father, held several jobs including in used car and real estate sales. He died in 2002. Joseph H. Biden, Joe Biden's grandfather, was an oil salesman who lived in Baltimore. He was born in 1893 and died in 1941, according to genealogist Megan Smolenyak. She has written about the Biden family tree.

George T. Biden, Joe Biden's great-grandfather, lived in Baltimore County, Md., and worked as a produce dealer, according to a document from the 1910 Census. He was born around 1867, two years after the last of the enslaved people in the United States learned they were free, and died in 1933, according to Smolenyak.

Joseph H. Biden, Joe Biden's great-great-grandfather, is from the Civil War period when slavery existed in the United States. Joseph H. Biden as a carpenter who lived in Baltimore County, Md, noted Politifact.

He was on a draft registration list for the Union Army, according to a document provided to PolitiFact by genealogist Megan Smolenyak, but she said it doesn’t appear he served, and there is no evidence he enslaved people. He died in 1895, she said. because 'Bidens' has not been found in the databases examined regarding slave owners. The Biden's ancestry family tree shows that Joe's paternal great-grandfather George T.Biden was born in 1867 and was a produce dealer.

Biden had a great-great-great-grandfather named Thomas Herbert Randle. He was born in Baltimore County, Maryland, in 1803 and married Mary Ann Shoemaker Randle, a farmer. They had two children, Thomas and Lydia Ann, and the latter married Joseph.H.Biden. They had a child who was George. So, in other words, Joe's great-great-grandfather was Thomas Herbert Randle.

In Maryland State Archives' Legacy of Slavery,' Thomas H. Randle is registered on this 1850 slave schedule. Randle is not listed as a slave owner in 1860. This record also provides no further information about Randle other than his name.

Snopes reports it found a few other Thomas Randles (or Randol's, Randalls, or Randells — misspelled names shared on the census) living in Maryland around this period. While these Randles were found in Baltimore County's first district in 1850, other Randle families living in this area opens up the likelihood that the Randle on the slave schedule was someone other than Biden's great-great-great-grandfather.

While it is not accurate to conclude that Biden's great-great-great-grandfather owned a slave in 1850, with relative certainty, this person Thomas H. Randle had servants. U.S. Census records from 1860 reveal that Thomas H. Randle had two servants named Peggy and Delia Malters. Richard Savoy, a 19-year-old Black 'farm laborer,' was also registered under Randle's name. However, there is an uncertainty that these two Randles were indeed the same.