What is power? Who has it? Who speaks to it? She is a powerhouse. She speaks.
“Clothes on Their Backs” is a handwoven dress form suspended from a wooden rod, in two joined sections – an upper bodice and a lower skirt.. Like “In Conversation”, seven separate linen warp sections have weft threads passing back and forth within and between warp sections, and crossing over, twisting around; joining and passing. These too represent exchanges of information between generations of the family. The weft materials change frequently – sometimes linen, sometimes jute string, or jute cord, or wool. The bodice section has copper wire weft that creates rib-like structures. Warp tails from the bodice section become weft in the skirt. Threads meander, changing direction, sometimes quickly and sometimes slow.
Agnes S is so-called here to differentiate her from her mother, also Agnes.
Agnes S was born around 1831 in Forfar, Angus. Like her mum, we have no birth record for Agnes S, and we meet her first in the 1841 census as a ten-year-old living in Forfar with her mum and siblings. By 1851, aged 20 and unmarried, Agnes S had moved from Forfar to Kirriemuir and was working as a ‘handloom weaver linen’ while lodging with a family in the Roods.
Agnes S moved regularly around Kirriemuir, from the time of her marriage in 1857 aged 27 through the birth of her children between 1858 and 1867. In both the 1861 and 1871 censuses, Agnes S was still working as a ‘(brown) linen weaver’. She was working while her children were young, keeping clothes on their backs.
By the 1881 census, aged 59, Agnes S was no longer working and was by now living in Tillyloss, near the outskirts of Kirriemuir, along the road from the house where the author JM Barrie had been born and where he lived during 1860-1868 and 1870-1874.
Agnes S couldn’t write – she signed certificates with “X” (noted as “her mark”).
JM Barrie writes about the weavers of Tillyloss in “A Tillyloss Scandal” (published 1890) and “The Little Minister” (1891). “A Tillyloss weaver whom he tried to stop struck him savagely and sped past to the square.” I like to imagine Agnes S was fierce… like her descendants – and used her voice.
Agnes S died at Tillyloss in 1885, aged 56 years, and is buried nearby at Kirriemuir Cemetery in an unmarked grave.
No members of our branch of the family who are alive today remember Agnes S or anyone who came before her.
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