Stephen Adam Fonda was born April 23, 1832, into the Mohawk Valley branch of the family. He spent much of his early life around the Fonda homestead and farm economy before the Civil War interrupted ordinary life.
In 1862 he went to war with the 115th New York Volunteers as sutler, serving through the conflict. Afterward he returned to Montgomery County, where his public life became as important to local memory as his military service.
From veteran to sheriff
Fonda was active in Democratic politics, served as supervisor of the town of Mohawk, and became sheriff of Montgomery County. Contemporary obituaries remembered him as both a Civil War veteran and a former sheriff, a combination that placed him prominently in county affairs.
His term as sheriff is associated in the surviving family research with Montgomery County’s last hanging—a grim but historically revealing episode from the period when capital punishment was still administered locally rather than through the later centralized state system.
Fonda lived into his eighties and remained connected with veterans’ and fraternal organizations. He died at Fort Plain in January 1917.
The larger narrative is the transition from wartime service to county government: one man moving from the logistics of a volunteer regiment into the everyday—and occasionally severe—responsibilities of nineteenth-century local public office.
Sources and references
- Fonda-Genealogy.pdf: Current genealogy report, Updated July 2026; biographical notes and cited source extracts.