By 
CELEBRATED local writer and poet, Rose Kavanagh, is the subject of a talk this evening at the Tyrone GAA Centre at Garvaghey.
The presentation will be delivered by an ancestor of the 19th century literary figure, Mary Rose Gillen, who has conducted a significant deal of research into Kavanagh’s work.
Gillen was brought up in the same Augher homestead as Kavanagh, and her grandfather, Patrick Cassidy, was a full cousin of Rose Kavanagh. She now lives in Derry where she spent her career as a chemistry teacher in Thornhill.
Rose Kavanagh is one of the most significant children of Tyrone, leaving a lasting impression on all who met her, and contributing greatly to Ireland’s literary and political development.
Born in Killadroy in 1859, or possibly 1860, Rose moved to Mullaghmore, Augher when she was 11.
Educated chiefly at the Loreto Convent, Omagh, Rose moved to Dublin to study art but gradually shifted more and more into the worlds of writing and poetry.
Her close circle was a who’s who of late 19th century Irish literature and politics, and included among many others Charles J. Kickham, WB Yeats (who wrote an obituary for her), Alice Milligan, Douglas Hyde, ‘Ethna Carbery’ and Katherine Tynan.
Rose developed as a writer, poet and editor of significance in her own right, despite suffering from TB for many years, for which she received expert care from another Tyrone icon, Dr George Sigerson.
Rose spent her final months back at home, within sight of her ‘darling Knockmany’, where she died at just past 30 years of age on 26 February 1891.
She is buried at St Macartan’s (‘The Forth’) Chapel, in a grave of her own choosing, with a St Macartan stained glass window in the Chapel dedicated to her memory.
Mary Rose Gillen’s presentation on Rose Kavanagh will take place at the Tyrone GAA Centre, Garvaghey this evening at 7.30pm.
