them opportunities to perform in public. She taught until age 85 and died in 1970 at the age of 103. Caparn's parents were married in Manhattan in 1906 after her mother had dissolved a marriage of 1889 to George Claiborne Royall (1860–1943), a merchant of Goldsboro, North Carolina. Caparn had an older sister, Anne Howard Caparn (1907–1971), with whom she was close. She had two step-brothers from her mother's first marriage, Kenneth Claiborne Royall (1894–1971) and George Claiborne Royall, Jr. (1896–1967). Both were raised by their father in Goldsboro, both attended the University of North Carolina, and both served as officers in the U.S. Army. The elder was a lawyer and general in the U.S. Army. Appointed Secretary of the Army in 1947, he oversaw the racial integration of the Army and Air Force. Having returned to private practice he was, in 1963, appointed co-leader of a commission to investigate white-supremicist violence in Birmingham, Alabama. The younger saw service in France during World War I and retired as a Major. He was an investment banker in the 1920s and subsequently held positions in the federal government in Washington, D.C. As a child, Caparn enjoyed outdoor life on her family's rustic estate called Fernie Farm in Briarcliff Manor, New York. She later said her childhood ambition was to collect animals, adding that neighbors learned to call her parents when their pets disappeared. A biographer of Caparn's said that in watching her father implement the landscape designs for the property, Caparn "became aware of her father's enthusiasm for designed space--the positive shape of a tree, the negative shape of the sky, the precise angle of a slope." Although the family stayed at Fernie Farm only on weekends and during vacations, Caparn's parents were contributing members of the community. Giving the Briarcliff address as her residence, her mother was founder and president of the Art Alliance of Westchester County. Her father was a member of the Briarcliff municipal board and designer of the village park. Caparn attended the Brearley School between 1918 and 1927. In 1925 and 1926 she took dance classes from Adeline King Robinson in preparation for her 1927 début in New York society. Complying with social practices of the time, Caparn's mother hosted a series of luncheons in her honor at the Cosmopolitan Club. After graduating from Brearley, Caparn received a prize for academic excellence as a first-year Bryn Mawr