Late eighteenth-century Albany shopkeeper in a dark coat speaks with a customer amid glassware and ceramics along a busy street.
John Isaac Fondey, a Revolutionary War veteran and Albany merchant, is depicted serving customers near his late-eighteenth-century shop, which sold glassware, ceramics, looking glasses and other goods. Historical reconstruction; details and likenesses are interpretive.

Son of Albany area residents Isaac D. and Susanna DeForest Fonda, John was also was known as "Fondey". While still in his teens, he joined the crusade for American liberties. He was an ensign in an Albany Ranger company and also a quartermaster and lieutenant in Colonel Marinus Willet's regiment of the New York troops. Surviving records refer to his militia unit as "Fondey's Party". In 1779, his name first appeared on a city assessment roll. In 1780, he began to take his place in Albany society when he was appointed fire master in the second ward. With the end of the war, he entered business (selling imported glass and ceramics) and began to acquire real estate along Foxes Creek. His extensive real estate dealings in Albany and Watervliet are chronicled online.

He married Cornelia Hun in 1783 and settled into her father's home on North Market Street at the corner of Van Tromp. Their children were baptized in the Albany Dutch church where both parents were members. His growing family was counted within the household of his father-in-law in 1790. By 1800, he had taken over as the head of the third ward household that now included a dozen members. In 1803, his family was memorialized in a beautiful portrait by Albany artist Ezra Ames. Over the next decade, Fonda/Fondey brought his sons and son-in-law into his business and sought to develop his waterfront holdings. The landmark home and grounds were North End fixtures.

Ezra Ames was Albany's premier portraitist for more than 40 years, with over 700 recorded pictures. In addition, he painted occasional landscapes, still lifes, and history pictures, and was active as an engraver as well. AIHA has the largest holding of Ames's work, numbering 66 paintings and 27 miniatures. The Fondey Family remains one of the artist's most ambitious works. John Fondey Jr. is shown with his wife Cornelia and their four children. Ames recorded the identities and ages of the subjects of the painting in an amazing piece of trompe l'oeil work, the curling paper in the upper right, which appears to hang down in front of the picture. John Fondey sold looking glasses, fiddles, china, glass and earthenware from a firm on Court Street in Albany. The AIHA collection contains a number of other pieces originally belonging to the Fondey family.

Color portrait painting of the Fondey family, seven family members in early nineteenth-century clothing with a dog, seated and standing together.
The Fondey Family, painted by Ezra Ames in 1803, portrays John Fondey, Cornelia Hun Fondey and their children. The original oil painting is held by the Albany Institute of History & Art.

Sources and references

  • New York State Museum, Colonial Albany Social History Project, biography of John Fondey Jr. (original Story citation formerly http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/f/jofondajr.html; present article address unverified).
  • New York probate record, will of John Fondey Jr., probate 1 August 1814, Albany County (the Museum’s will transcript was formerly at http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/wills/willjofondajr.html; original register not examined).
  • Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, Fondey service entry (bibliographic identification requires original individual entry check; use as a military-service lead only).