Dylann Roof, in his writings, expressed the wish that white people had actually owned enslaved people as much as people say white people did
However, when reading the article “The Making of Dylann Roof”, it was mentioned that Dylann Roof had an ancestor who owned an 8 year old mulatto child:
The Roofs of the 19th century were not what anyone would call an illustrious family, but they did well enough in Columbia to be recorded in local history books as diligent churchgoers and good citizens. Dylann's great-great-great-grandfather played a minor role in the Civil War: Jesse Marion Roof had planned to become a minister, and would have if the Civil War hadn't interrupted his studies. Instead, he married a woman named Tarsy in 1859, and three years later, he enlisted in the Confederate army as a corporal. He was put on boat duty and ran water to Morris Island, which is best known as the site of the horrendous defeat of the first black members of the Union army. But these were not remarkable lives. If anything, they were wholly typical. They were so typical that when I was at a local library, the only thing that caught my eye about Roof's early ancestor was that when Jesse Marion and Tarsy Roof's household was tallied for the census, along with their names there was listed in the household a small “mulatto” child. “I wish with a passion that n——s were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every white person had an ancestor who owned slaves,” Dylann wrote on his website, TheLastRhodesian.com. Although all white Americans have benefited from the centuries of free black labor, it is true that the majority of white southerners were in no position to own anything or anyone. Dylann Roof's ancestors also had very little, but they owned a child, an enslaved girl. There was no first name listed, but her last name was Roof, and she was 8.
With all due respect, since the author of the article is a black woman, I really wanted to confirm whether this was true or just information brought up through some kind of confusion.
During my research, I discovered that this ancestor was Jesse Marion Roof. Jesse was born in 1837 and died in 1911 in South Carolina. There are records of Jesse M. Roof serving in the army in 1862 during the American Civil War, fighting for the Confederates, with tributes also dedicated to him.
In the 1860 Slave Schedule, the name Jesse M. Roof appears as the owner of an enslaved child, 8 years old. There are no records of the enslaved people’s names, nor of their roles with their owners. I know that focusing it doesn't seem to be "Jesse Marion" but this is what I found on family search and also a screenshot of the Jesse "profile" saying slaver owner
Jesse Marion Roof was buried in Lexington at Saint David's Lutheran Church cemetery, which seems to be the same cemetery where Dylann Roof took some photos of himself, judging by the features of the images I found online.
these are the pictures of the cemetery taken by Dylann, btw. Just check if you think like me, I really think it's in this cemetery. He probably knew he had a Confederate ancestor and went to there
So, in summary, in addition to Dylann Roof’s strongly Southern personality, his ancestors were proud Confederates, and Jesse Marion Roof was a slave owner.
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