About Joseph B. Ely
Joseph Buell Ely (February 22, 1881 – June 13, 1956) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from Massachusetts. As a conservative Democrat, Ely was active in party politics from the late 1910s, helping to build, in conjunction with David I. Walsh, the Democratic coalition that would gain an enduring political ascendancy in the state. From 1931 to 1935, he served as the 52nd governor of Massachusetts. He was opposed to the federal expansion of the New Deal, and was a prominent intra-party voice in opposition to the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1944 he made a brief unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. == Early years == Joseph Buell Ely was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, to Henry Wilson Ely and Sarah Naomi Buell Ely. His grandfather, Joseph Miner Ely, was one of the founders of Westfield's important whip industry, and his father, a lawyer, was active in Democratic party circles in heavily Republican western Massachusetts. Ely attended local schools, and then Williams College, where he helped organize student support for William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 presidential election. He graduated from Williams in 1902, and then received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1905. He returned to Westfield, where he joined his father's law firm.
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