Woodbury Falls is a hamlet in the north part of the town, taking its name from the falls in Woodbury Creek. It was formerly the seat of a furnace. A post-office was established here August 11, 1874, and Lewis A. Van Cleft was the first postmaster. James Seaman is the present incumbent.
The specific details of the settlement of this region are blended with the histories of the towns of Cornwall and Monroe, to which the reader is referred.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE BENCH AND BAR.
By William Vanamee.
At the unveiling in Goshen, September 5th, 1907, of the monument in memory of the gallant soldiers of the 124th Regiment, erected by that modern exemplar of medieval knighthood, that truest of men, of gentlemen and of heroes, Thomas W. Bradley, it was mentioned by one of the speakers that just forty-five years before, upon that very spot, as the regiment was about to start for the front, the stand of colors destined to be carried by it through many a battle, was presented to it in behalf of the Daughters of Orange by Charles H. Winfield.
His noble, inspiring speech upon that occasion was fitly responded to in behalf of the regiment by David F. Gedney, then Mr. Winfield's only rival at the Goshen bar and his acknowledged equal. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon either is that each feared for the success of his cause when opposed by the other. Indeed they were nearly always opposed, for what timid, anxious client, learning that his adversary had engaged the services of one, ever failed to suggest to his local attorney the importance of averting prospective defeat by the employment of the other. This remark of course applies chiefly to litigations arising in the Western end of the county, in which the trials were usually held at Goshen, for in Newburgh, Stephen W. Fullerton, who was admitted to the bar in 1844, just one year before Mr. Gedney was admitted and two years before Mr. Winfield, had from the first successfully challenged their supremacy in the county at large. Well might he do so, for while he was not the equal of Winfield in magnetism and force or of Gedney in scholarship and style, yet he excelled them both in acuteness, in industry and in mastery of the rules of evidence. This, then, was the great triumvirate that forty years ago reigned supreme throughout the county of Orange in the affection of their associates, in the admiration of juries and in the plaudits of the multitude—Winfield, Gedney, Fullerton. All three possessed genius of an uncommon order and no court, however insensible to the graces of oratory, could wholly restrain its flights or direct its course. When the vexatious details of the testimony were over—for in those days the testimony was regarded by the public as a tedious formality preparatory to the great event of the trial, the summing up—and when it was understood that the addresses to the jury were to begin, the courtroom was quickly filled by people from all parts of the county, eager for the intellectual treat that was sure to follow. Winfield was wont to begin his closing argument somewhat slowly and even laboriously. This was due partly to the habit of his mind, which required the stimulus of exercise to quicken it to its highest exertions, but partly also to rhetorical design, by which he sought to make his subsequent outbursts of impassioned eloquence seem wholly unstudied, spontaneous and irrepressible. Indeed, they usually were. As the thought of his client's wrongs surged in upon him, as he dwelt upon his client's right to protection or relief, or contemplated the disaster involved in defeat, his words could scarcely keep pace with the torrent of impetuous, sincere and deep emotion on which they were upborne. He always struck the human note which the case presented. To him a trial did not involve a mere application of legal principles to an ascertained state of facts, but to him every case, however dry, barren or abstract, was a human drama. He saw, with the eye of imagination and the insight of genius, those forces of hate and revenge, of greed and falsehood, of cunning and cruelty, of devotion and affection, of honor and truth, which in one form or another, surcharge every trial, and project their palpitating figures upon the most intensely vital, vibrant stage for which the scenes were ever set—the conscious court-room, the austere judge, the impassioned advocates, the enthralled spectators; human life or liberty, human happiness or despair, human rights or relations, hanging in the balance upon a jury's nod. All this Winfield saw. In every trial the panorama of human life unfolded itself to his inspired vision. He took the broken, confused fragments of human testimony and subjecting them to the kaleidoscope of his own fervent, symmetrizing, mirroring imagination, they were transformed into pictures of beauty or shapes of evil, as he willed.
It can easily be imagined that his power over juries was well nigh irresistible. If David F. Gedney, who was so often pitted against him, had sought to counteract his influence by the exercise of similar gifts, he might well have despaired of success. But happily for himself and for the delight of juries and the bar, no advocates were ever more unlike each other in method of argument, in point of attack, in form of expression, in appeal to the sentiments, than Winfield and Gedney. Winfield filled the eye; Gedney charmed the ear. Winfield visited upon wrong or duplicity the bludgeon blows of invective. Gedney pierced it with the envenomed shaft of sarcasm. Winfield sought to break the armor of his adversary with the broad axe of denunciation. Gedney penetrated it with the slender arrow of wit and the fatal spear of ridicule. To Winfield language was a necessary vehicle of thought, a familiar medium of expression. To Gedney language was a divine instrument, over the responsive chords of which his master touch swept with unerring taste and classic grace, evoking notes of exquisite harmony and images of surpassing beauty. The words that flowed unbidden from his enchrismed lips were music indeed. His sentences, chaste and polished as though chiseled in the very laboratory of thought, were but the unconscious reflection of a mind steeped in the literature of every age and tongue. Even Winfield often found to his dismay that those weapons of solid argument which would have defied all the onslaughts of the gladiator, were powerless before the arts of the magician. Not indeed that Gedney elevated style above matter or sacrificed strength to beauty. But in him style and matter were so delicately balanced, beauty and strength so discreetly blended, that each borrowed from the other and none was poorer for the exchange.
The personal characteristics of the two men were also different. Winfield loved the approbation and applause of his fellows and aspired to political honors. Gedney looked out upon the world with philosophic calm, undisturbed by its clamors and un-tempted by its baubles. The only offices which he held were strictly in the line of his profession—district attorney and county judge—while Winfield acquired a conspicuous position in Congress at a time of intense public interest and excitement. Winfield bore defeat with impatience, Gedney with equanimity. Winfield, who especially could not endure the thought of defeat by a younger adversary, often treated him with unnecessary severity; always, however, taking care to express his regret afterwards that the heat and zeal of conflict had carried him too far. Gedney, on the other hand, never suffered to arise the occasion for apology or regret. He disdained to use his unrivaled powers of sarcasm and ridicule at the expense of a weaker adversary, and throughout the entire course of a trial, he was scrupulous not to say one word which might in any degree wound the sensibilities of a younger member of the bar. Moreover, he always look pains to speak a word of encouragement and praise to the younger lawyers whenever their maiden efforts justified interest or respect.