O’Rourke says he and wife descended from slave owners

“Something that we’ve been talking about in town hall meetings – the legacy of slavery in the United States – now has a much more personal connection,” O’Rourke said. “I was recently given documents showing that both Amy and I are descended from people who owned slaves.”

O’Rourke included a link to a medium.com article he wrote titled “Rose and Eliza,” in reference to two slaves one his distance relatives owned.

“A paternal great-great-great grandfather of mine, Andrew Cowan Jasper, owned these two women in the 1850s,” O’Rourke wrote.

He added that records also showed that an ancestor of his wife, Amy, owned slaves while another was part of the Confederate Army.