Athlete Jackson finds slave roots

The Cardiff-born athlete turned TV sports commentator is taking part in a new series of the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are?

He has linked his own "fieriness" to his rebel ancestors.

He said: "I feel really proud that I'm still linked genetically to the first settlers of Jamaica."

Jackson was able to trace his tree back to his paternal great-great-great grandfather Adam Wilson Senior, who died in Jamaica in 1849.

Adam was almost certainly born a slave, and was the property of a plantation and slave-owner Valentine Dwyer, but would have been emancipated by the UK's abolition of slavery in 1843.

He had a plot of land on a former plantation called Maidstone, and worked hard enough to afford a second one.

Jackson said: "When you read that your forefathers actually belonged to somebody it is something that's fact; I can't hide from that fact.

"I hate the fact they were slaves but it's great to know where they existed and where everything truly began."

Jackson's father Ossie, who came to the UK in 1962 from Jamaica, still has cousins living on the island, and from them he learned more about his forebears.

Sporting prowess seems to have run in the family, as two close forebears were called Speedy, and a cousin had been a boxer.

The ex-athlete had his DNA analysed for the programme, showing he is 55% sub-Saharan African, 38% European, and, as something which came as a surprise, 7% Native American.

He is descended from Taino Indians, the native inhabitants of Jamaica, who later mixed with escaped slaves and formed their own Maroon communities, who fought against slavery and for Jamaican independence in the 17th century.

"The fieriness that the maroons had, first with their fight with the Spanish and then the English, I think I've got that in me now.

"Because when I lined up on many occasions to compete for Great Britain it took a lot of heart and soul to get out there and to really be at war with my competitors."

On his mother's side, he found his great-great-grandfather Duncan Campbell was a Scot living in Kingston in the 19th century, where there was a sizeable Scottish community at the time.

His daughter Gladys, born in 1888, married Richard Packer and the couple moved to Panama, where records show Richard worked on the canal in 1905.

Jackson's grandmother, Maria Packer, was born in Panama in 1921, moving to Jamaica to complete her education, where she met and married his grandfather, the wonderfully named Everil Emmanuel Augustus Dunkley, or Dee.

They split up when Maria returned to Panama to look after her sick father, and Dee moved the children - including Jackson's mother Angela - to Wales in 1955, where she married Ossie Jackson seven years later.

Who Do You Think You Are? can be seen on BBC Two on Wednesday, 20 September.

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