My assigned Latin American club member was Vicente Guillermety.
I initially chose him because of his interesting last name, which I figured would gather some interesting results. Alas, he was not one of those guys in the frat that we discovered in our time at the Bentley library. I’m not a big fan of greek life, but for early campus communities of people of color, they seem to be the source of some of the earliest easy to identify poc communities. I’m not giving up though! Upon searching for more information on Vicente I did make some observations on his experience assimilating in the university.
I stared out reviewing his necrology file. He did not list any biological parents, but instead put down some legal guardians. The first one listed as his guardian is from when he enrolled in 1912 to 1917: Manuel M. Guillermety from San Juan Puerto Rico, indicating that prior to coming to Michigan, Vicente must have lived in Puerto Rican and is therefore a Puerto Rican. Given the time period of the history of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory, this would indicate that despite being Puerto Rican, Vicente was still seen as a Latin American student. He attended school from 1912-1917 and was a civil engineer. He died in 1965 in Livona, Michigan and his last recorded job before retiring was a project engineering in Detroit city engineer’s office.
In class we spoke a lot about the role the vicinity of these students had in relationship to other students of color. At some point in 1913-1914, around the time Vicente enrolled, he put down M. Perquera Jr. as a guardian. Perquera’s address is 812 E. Washington. I assume this change in guardian might signal that Vicente feels he needs to put down a guardian with an American address. We do not see this guardian again. This was Vicente’s first U.S. residence documented by the University of Michigan. In Vicente’s necrology file, we see a misspelling of Vicente’s name from the spanish “Vicente” to the anglo sounding “Vincent”. Therefore in my search I looked at the spanish spelling of his name, as indicated in his representation in the Latin American Club in addition to the anglo Vincent that I had to use to find his necrology file.
I tried searing the Michigan Daily, got no results from the census information but found his necrology file as the core sources of my gathered information on his life. There were little results in the Michigan daily, but I did learn that under hospital notes for March 24, 1916, Vincent Guillermety was in the hospital for a case of Otitis media, which is a case of ear inflammation and infection. That is the last we hear of poor Vicente in the Michigan daily. Later on in 1936, there was a freshman listed under the name C. M. Guillermety who won an R.O.T.C. bronze award for best drilled freshmen. I wonder if they were related?