ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604010091
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: APRIL F. HOODWINK STAFF WRITER
J. Tacitus "Moonbeam" Mooncalf needed a lucky break. He got one.
For years, the Virginia Tech history professor's work on the genealogies of Virginia's Indian tribes had earned him him nothing but the jeers of his colleagues.
``They said Native Americans didn't keep genealogies,'' recalled Mooncalf - who has some Bittachoochoohooey Indian blood himself, and was secretly hoping to find his ancestors. ``They thought I was wasting my time.''
Privately, he had his own doubts. But he wasn't one to give up.
Thus it was that on a day last summer, Mooncalf found himself in a musty room at the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., with a leather folder in his shaking hands.
The folder was labeled "Hiramtown, Va." Mooncalf had picked it up idly, near despair - but the drawings he found inside made his heart lurch.
Born and bred in Elliston, Mooncalf knew Roanoke when he saw it, even in a century-old pencil sketch.
Besides, the star on the mountaintop was a dead giveaway.
Still, this was a Roanoke that Mooncalf had never imagined.
The hand-written journal beneath the drawings told the story:
Before Roanoke was Roanoke, he read with astonishment, it was Hiramtown - a labyrinth of Gothic buildings, romantic man-made waterways and crooning gondoliers.
As Mooncalf turned the brittle pages one by one, reading the scrawled words, he felt what he had never felt before - the thrill of a major historical discovery.
The light clicked on - the one in his overwrought brain. Mooncalf felt his self-esteem soar.
"Golly, it was exciting. I mean, it was a little like discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls, or unearthing Pompeii or something," he said, twirling his thick-lensed spectacles between his fingers. "I guess the first thing I thought was, 'They'll have to take me seriously now.'"
What Mooncalf had unearthed, he believes, was nothing less than the long-forgotten story of the Star City's true beginning - a story that debunks the notion Roanoke began life as a railroad town.
Incredibly, all but unbelievably, before the locomotives and the coal cars there were gondolas.
Before Center in the Square, there were organ grinders and vegetable vendors in the Piazza Della Mozzarella.
Before the Blue Ridge Parkway, before "Explore" - before almost everything that today we call "Roanoke" - the city was a kind of 19th-century Venice theme park, complete with vina rosso, stand-up toilets and bad Italian accents.
According to Mooncalf - a disheveled, bespectacled, earnest scholar of 35 who favors bow ties and tweed - Hiramtown was the vision of one Hiram Lincoln (no relation to the president).
Born in a cabin along the Wilderness Trail, not far from the house where Mooncalf himself grew up, Lincoln was an unscrupulous soldier of fortune who served as a Civil War general - for both sides.
After several years of drawing two paychecks while simultaneously avoiding any hint of battle, Lincoln finally left for Italy during the siege of Richmond - supposedly to nurse a pulmonary problem.
He came back home with a vision - and a slogan: "Hiramtown. A little bit of Italy at Big Lick."
Lincoln's journal tells the story, Mooncalf said:
How the general hired war veterans for a song to dig the canals.
How he dammed the Roanoke River to fill the canals with water.
How he brought in architects from Europe to build hotels that looked like Venetian palaces - and went to Venice himself to bring back authentic Italian gondoliers.
How he persuaded the railroad to build a spur to Hiramtown, so that visitors to the region's popular mineral-spring resorts could enjoy "a little bit of Italy" on their way back to the flatlands.
"He had everything worked out, right down to the number of pepperoni slices on the pizzas," Mooncalf maintains. "He had a great sense for details, and for the big picture, too. I mean, this guy was amazing. He was just a genius. And driven.
"This just completely changes the history of Southwest Virginia as we know it. It's a very significant discovery."
Not everyone is convinced.
"He's bonkers," believes Beatrice Baumgardner, the highly respected author of "From Big Lick to Big City: A Roanoke Journey." "He's out to lunch. Looney Tunes. He needs a nice, long vacation in a certified institution."
Said a colleague who asked not to be identified:
"That nitwit? He lost his brain in 1983. Listen: Don't believe a word he tells you. He'd do anything for tenure."
Mooncalf, however, insists that his version of Roanoke's history is accurate.
As proof, he points to Lincoln's descendants, who have lived in obscurity for a century in Franklin County - and, he says, have provided him with lots of documents and other relics that support his story.
Said Lincoln family spokesman Jeeter Lincoln Overstreet:
``I know some people won't believe what this feller has to say, especially with all the troubles our family has had over the years with the federal government about some little matters, but I swear it's true as the sun rising up in the morning. What happened to old Uncle Hiram was just plain shameful, as shameful as it can be. We're getting our lawsuit together right now.''
So what did happen to Hiram Lincoln - and Hiramtown?
According to Mooncalf, Hiramtown's fate was a sad one.
H. Pervis Steam, ruthless chief executive officer for the now defunct Moolah and Malarkey Railroad Co., apparently saw more profit in coal than spaghetti carbonara. Besides, said Mooncalf, Steam loathed the mosquitoes that were beginning to breed by the millions in Hiramtown's reeking canals.
The rest of the story, Mooncalf has scrupulously pieced together from reliable sources, he said.
He contends that there was a serious spat one night between Steam and Lincoln.
Soon afterward, Lincoln disappeared. Some say he fled under cover of darkness carrying a bulging carpetbag. Others claim Steam - or some other equally tough customer - dumped Lincoln into one of his precious canals, wearing a pair of concrete galoshes.
In any event, the dam was eventually demolished, the canals filled in, and Hiramtown razed to dust.
Which raises the question: Why has nobody mentioned it before now?
"Hey, I'm a historian," said Mooncalf, "not a psychiatrist. Maybe people wanted to talk about Oprah instead, or the weather or something. Sooner or later they just forgot. You ever forget to pay a bill, or pick up something at the cleaner's, or your wife's birthday? I mean, it's not that rare. People forget things all the time. Lighten up."
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Before the railroad came, there was Hiramtown, aby CNBromantic, watery city whose ambitious citizens relieved thousands of
tourists of their vacation money.
2. headshot of Professor Mooncalf
3. Hiram Lincoln (above) had a big vision for Big Lick: Canals,
gondolas, pizza - a little bit of Italy on the banks of the Roanoke
River.
4. This plainclothes police officer protected Hiramtown citizens and
visitors by watching for price-gouging gondoliers and other canal
criminals.