Nov 30, 2019 3 min read

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A young Margaret Capanna is shown with her parents, Guiseppe and Rosa D’Arcangelo.

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Margaret Capanna in high school.

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Margaret Capanna on her graduation day in 1945 from East Pike Run High School.

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Rosemary Capanna, standing, is shown with her mother, Margaret, with a photo of a relative they discovered during their family research.

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Rosemary Capanna was named after her maternal grandmother, but she didn’t even know the woman’s maiden name.

Capanna of California Borough set out on a journey to solve that mystery and others in a book she wrote about her mother’s heartbreaking childhood after becoming an orphan as a first-generation Italian-American in Pittsburgh and East Pike Run Township.

“Her parents were so good to her. I think that’s how she survived. She had hope,” Rosemary Capanna said while discussing her mother, Margaret, who was orphaned at age 12 and kept in near-isolation by her guardians.

“It was rough, said Margaret D’Arcangelo Capanna, who was initially sent to live with a distant relative after her mother died of cancer. “It was like an isolation camp.”

Margaret Capanna was born Nov. 1, 1927 to Giuseppe and Rosa D’Arcangelo when the family lived in the Panther Hollow section of Pittsburgh

Giuseppe rose to the rank of foreman at Jones & Laughlin Steel after coming to the United States from Quadri. It took his wife 15 years to join him only for him to die from the flu in 1929 at age 39.

Rosa eventually married Antonio D’Amico, Guiseppe’s cousin, and then she died a decade later, leaving her daughter an orphan.

Margaret inherited an equivalent to $100,000 in today’s dollars, money she would never see. She was sent to live with a distant relative who kept her in an apartment by herself and denied her food for stretches, leaving her nearly on her deathbed.

Her stepfather rescued her, nurturing her back to health and going to court to have her relocated to live with an aunt and uncle in East Pike Run.

“He saved my life,” Margaret said.

The situation for Margaret didn’t improve in her new home, where it took her until she was 27 years old to find a new life.

“It took a lot to get to that point,” she said.

Her aunt Lena called her foul names and wouldn’t permit her to write or receive letters in the mail or visit much with relatives.

Margaret said she has been impressed because many people are reading her story and saying the book, “Beginning on Boundary” was hard to put down.

“I was driven by curiosity, Rosemary said. “You uncover one thing and it leads you to another.”

The woman with a lonely childhood now has been contacted by nearly 100 members of her family from England, Canada, Italy and across the United States.

“That part’s been wonderful,” Rosemary said.

And the journey also revealed her grandmother’s maiden name as D’Aloisio.