By JEANETTE FLECK
WSU Intern
Two weeks ago, on April 1, 2014, Democrat John Velis won his seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in the special election. He is the first Democrat since 1979 to represent the 4th Hampden District – that other was John F. Coffey, who held the seat from 1974 through ’76, but had spent longer in the Massachusetts legislature. Sometime in the mid-’70’s, the districts were redrawn, cutting the total number of Representatives by half. The 4th Hampden District then encompassed all of Westfield on its own, when previously two districts had included parts of Westfield.
The Massachusetts State Legislature is one of the oldest continually-sitting forms of government in the world – first established in 1630, while Massachusetts was still a colony of England. Westfield was founded in 1669, and so would have had some form of representation in the State Legislature since its founding. The current State Constitution was enacted in October 1780, though all almanacs up through 1812 list Westfield and Springfield as a part of Hampshire County. In that first House, though, Westfield was represented by Captain David Mosely and Major Warham Parks, both of whom had served under General Washington in the Revolution.
Hampden County, and, with it, the official 4th Hampden District, was first acknowledged in 1813, with Westfield as the second largest town (Springfield being the largest), and incidentally, the westernmost town in Massachusetts. It is unclear whether the 4th Hampden District existed as such at that time, as Hampden County contained only about 17 towns at the time, none of which had more than three representatives. In that year, three men represented the town: Benjamin Hastings, Jedidiah Taylor, and Azariah Mosely. These were the first to represent Westfield as part of Hampden County.
More recently, after a very long line of Representatives, Republican Don Humason, Jr. was one of the people, if not the person, to represent the 4th Hampden district the longest. He held the seat for just under eleven years, from 2002 until November 2013, when he left the House to take his newly elected seat in the Senate. Now, it is John Velis’s turn to represent our town in this very historic legislature.
