Forging AHEAD

DAME JESSICA ENNIS-HILL on finding familiar traits in her ancestry

- CAREN CLARK, NATASHA HOLT

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
THURSDAY, 9PM, BBC1 FACTUAL

When TV Times joins retired athlete Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill to talk about her journey into the past for BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are?, she is pleased to report that the determination and perseverance that characterised her sporting career runs through her family tree.

‘I’d have loved it if there was an Olympic champion,’ smiles the chatty and warm star, 38, who won gold in the heptathlon at London 2012. ‘But it was great I found ancestors who had been through a lot but had shown strength and resilience.’

In Sheffield, where Jessica was born, she unravelled the harrowing mystery of why her maternal two-times great-grandmother, Emily Maud Powell, known as Maud, left her husband William and their children. Meanwhile, in Jamaica, she heard about her paternal four-times great-grandfather George Thomas White, who was enslaved but later became a landowner. Here, mum-of-two Jessica tells us about her findings…