GUILDERLAND — Aaron Mair is a man on a mission.

As the nation gears up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding, Mair wants to commemorate the only battle of the Revolutionary War fought in Albany County.

Part of his passion comes from being a Guilderland resident but most of his zeal comes from being African American.

Mair was raised in Peekskill, New York where the 1st Rhode Island continental line regiment was stationed. There, he learned about the heroism and death of the regiment’s leader, Colonel Christopher Greene, and of the Black soldiers Greene led at the Battle of Pines Bridge in Yorktown Heights in 1781.

A decade ago, Mair stopped by a roadside historic marker on Route 146 in Guilderland, noting the Aug. 11, 1777 Battle of the Normanskill, which took place four years before the defeat at Yorktown Heights.  He dug in and did the research to show that soldiers in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment joined with the Schenectady Militia to disperse a large group of Tories in a skirmish north of the Normanskill.

In recent years, Mair helped with raising funds to see a monument erected in Yorktown to honor Colonel Greene and the soldiers of the 1st Rhode Island regiment, which included Native Americans as well as freed Black men and enslaved Black men fighting alongside the white men who owned them.

The $300,000 statue in Yorktown, sculpted by Jay Warren, depicts three life-sized men — Greene, wielding a pistol in one hand and an ax in the other; a Black soldier in a plumed helmet, aiming a musket; and a bare-headed, bare-footed Native American soldier brandishing a sword.

Mair wants to see a similar statue installed along Route 146, with room for visitors to pull off the road, at the site of the Battle of the Normanskill.

“I will work with my network under the leadership of Peter Barber,” Mair said of Guilderlan’s town supervisor, whom he described as “enthusiastic” about the project.

Mair’s contract with the Adirondack Council, where he is the wilderness campaign director, ends in December, he said, after which he will devote his full efforts to raising funds for and consciousness about the Normanskill project.

His not-for-profit organization will be based in the historic Schoolcraft Mansion, a town-owned Gothic Revival building on Western Avenue that has been largely restored but is rarely used.

“I already have the keys,” Mair told The Enterprise this week.

He hopes to have a plan for the project before the town board by the end of July.

Mair sees the statue as being “inclusive of America the way we should be” and went on, “Guilderland is lucky to have a piece of history that cuts to the core.”

He continued about the regiment, “Their banner said, ‘Hope.’ We need hope more now than ever.”

Raising interest in history comes naturally to Mair. In his current position, he helped found the Timbuctoo Mountain Club.

The club is named for a 19th Century Adirondack settlement of African Americans in the area around what is now Lake Placid. Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist, purchased 3,000 plots for Black settlers because, in order for a Black man to vote in New York state, he needed to own $250 worth of property.

“Many Blacks already had jobs; they needed deeds,” Mair said.

The Timbuctoo Mountain Club was birthed through the Adirondack Council, Mair said, through a partnership with the City University of New York at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.

Now in its second year with $6 million in funding, the club brings youth from cities to “hike with a purpose,” said Mair as they learn about history along the way.

Mair’s view of history is nuanced.

He says, for example, that he was saddened when the statue of Philip Schuyler that had stood in front of Albany’s city hall for nearly a century was taken down.

He called the removal a political decision rather than one based on history.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial reckoning that swept America, Mair said, it made sense to take down statues of Confederate leaders that had been erected as symbols of white supremacy, cementing the legacy of Jim Crow laws in the South.

But, he said, the statue of Schuyler wasn’t erected as a form of white supremacy. “Schuyler wasn’t being honored as a slave holder but as a brilliant general,” said Mair.

He went on about the now removed statue, “There was a story to be told.” 

Mair mentioned, for example, that Schuyler had a half-son who founded a tugboat company. “A mega-millionaire of his day, Samuel Schuyler was a person of color,” said Mair. “There’s a bigger narrative to be told.”

Although the Battle of the Normanskill is often called the lost battle of the Revolution, Mair said, “If nothing was done, the Battle of Saratoga would have been quite different.”

That agrees with the assessment provided by A. C. Flick, New York State historian in the early part of the 20th Century: “This brief encounter might be passed over lightly by one not familiar with conditions in Albany at the time, but it brought about results of the greatest importance.”

Flick writes of how the British general, John Burgoyne was advancing down from Canada towards Albany. “Many families had fled and terror was in the heart of every patriot, for did the British gain the old Dutch city, independence was lost. The patriots were hemmed in on every side ….

“Burgoyne was successful in sending Tory aids to all parts of the colony of New York, where they stirred up the royalists and brought wavering patriots to the British side. Exaggerated reports of the success and rapid approach of the three expeditions of the British were spread and all too unhappily believed.”

After news that the “concentration of the Tory band on the Normanskill” had been dispersed “and that the principal Tories were imprisoned, there was great rejoicing,” Flick wrote. The victory on the Normanskill, he said, was followed by the successful defense of Fort Stanwix, the halting of the British at Kingston, and then the victory at Saratoga.

“The lost battle of the Revolution,” Flick concludes, “became the turning point in rallying the spirits of the patriots.”

Mair hopes the statue in Guilderland of the 1st Rhode Island regiment will lead to a more widespread understanding not just of the Battle of the Normanskill but to a larger narrative, that Blacks were an integral part of America’s victorious fight for independence, beginning with Crispus Attucks, an African American among those shot by British soldiers in 1770 in the Boston Massacre; the massacre inspired Paul Revere’s engraving, inciting anti-British sentiment.

“It’s easy for an important story to get buried,” said Mair. “I care about the younger generations knowing our history — my Olivia,” he said of his daughter, a student at Guilderland High School.

The monument he envisions will “tell the united story of the revolution,” he said, noting, “Blacks fought in every major battle.”

After the war, however, they were denied their pensions, he said.

While he noted the job ahead is a “herculean task” and “sounds like pie in the sky,” Mair also said, “I’m a citizen who is crazy and nuts and passionate. I’m just my own force of nature.”

He concluded, “The 200th anniversary is not just a celebration but a marker on how far we need to go. There is still work to be done for a more perfect union.”