Footsteps across time and place, following those who have gone before. Mitochondrial DNA is stable, largely unchanged over thousands of years, generation after generation.
“In Her Footsteps” (or “In Her Shoes”) is a wooden last for a child’s shoe, covered with handwoven linen, jute and red cotton fabric with a pattern that encodes our mitochondrial DNA sequence. The child’s shoe is elevated atop a short oak cylinder, which itself sits on a rectangular piece of handwoven linen on the floor. A greater-than-human-sized footprint is outlined in red cotton on the rectangle of fabric. The child’s shoe sits within this.
Martha is the only direct matrilineal ancestor who did not work in a weaving-related role, though three of her older siblings did. At the time of her marriage in 1921, aged 20, she was working as a domestic servant. After marriage, Martha had six children and lived up the glens with her family before moving back into town when the adult children reached working age. In 1956, aged 56, Martha emigrated to Canada where she worked as a technician in a scientific laboratory, before moving back to Kirriemuir sometime before 1969.
By the time of her death in 1980, aged 79 years, Martha was living in sheltered housing on the same street where her own mother had lived as a four-year-old. I remember my granny taking me to visit her there – a slight, white-haired, old woman who liked tea and biscuits to my four-year-old eyes, with no knowledge of her adventurous travels.
We know not the paths that our ancestors took, only that we follow in and from them.
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