A current research preoccupation of mine is a photo of my maternal grandfather, Arthur David Belforti (born Achille Alessio Riccardo Belforti, 1902-1996), which my mother recently gave me and which is pictured here.  Having had a close relationship with this grandparent, I have always been particularly keen on researching his past and his branch of the family.  There is no handwriting on the reverse of the photo, and my mother has no details about it.  My first thought upon seeing it was that it might have been taken in or near Detroit.  My reasons for believing this were several – 1) before my grandfather was married, he lived in the Detroit area for a couple of years around 1929, drawn there to work at Henry Ford’s newly opened and highly innovative River Rouge plant; 2) his apparent age in the photo seems to match up with that time period; 3) I didn’t recognize the person who sits next to him in the photo, and neither did my mother; and 4) we didn’t recognize the place.  My grandfather lived in just three places during his life – Italy, Massachusetts, and Michigan.  I’m pretty familiar with the first two, but not so much with the third. Continue reading Beautiful Detroit →