She began life as a foundling. Her surname "Bolognara" or "Calcagno" (often both are used) came from the nurse she was entrusted to, having been abandoned by her biological parents. It is said that after a difficult childhood growing up at an orphanage in Catania, she became the servant of a Catanian innkeeper; she may also have worked in the stables. Bolognara Calcagno is not mentioned for her "virtuousness," the main trait by which women were judged in that era, given that she had a relationship with a man much younger than her, and for this she was degraded in the eyes of 19th-century society. This young man, a stable boy by trade, was named Vanni. It appears that through her relationship with Vanni, Bolognara Calcagno wound up involved in the revolutionary movements for Italian unification that took place in 1860.