A quarter of a century ago, a historic timepiece made a brief appearance in the news when an old watch with a silver case engraved with the name "Horatio Allen" came into the possession of a Charlotte, N. C., jeweler. Reports at the time hailed it as "the first railroad watch." Certainly it belonged to one of railroading's pioneers.

What may well be America's first railroad watch- the personal timepiece of one of the outstanding early railroad builders - turned up in a Charlotte, N. C., jeweler's show case a quarter of a century ago.

It was a large, key-winding watch in a sterling silver case engraved with a deer on the front and a sailing ship on the back. Inside were inscribed the names "Horatio Allen" and "M. I. Tobias" (believed to be the jeweler who made it), and the words "Rail Road Time Keeper," 'Hands 1833" and "Liverpool."

The face of the watch bore the legend "Rail Road Time Keeper" and a drawing of an early locomotive.

W. I. Nolan, the Charlotte jeweler who took the watch in trade, showed it to newsmen in 1931 and again in 1934 during a visit to Charleston, S. C. He told the Charleston reporter that the man who sold it to him gave his name as Brown and claimed to be the great-grandson of Horatio Allen, the chief engineer who directed the building of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company Line from Charleston to Hamburg in the 1830's.

Brown's story, as the jeweler retold it, was that his father - a Confederate soldier-carried the watch during the War Between the States, had it taken from him on being captured and later killed a man in getting the watch back. Brown himself claimed to have killed a man in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War to regain possession of the heirloom. (He seemed to have no reluctance, the jeweler added, in trading it in on a new watch.)

After his retirement from active professional life, Horatio Allen (left) wrote an account published in 1884 called "The Railroad Era, The First Five Years of Its Development." In it he gave his often-quoted 'reason for choosing steam locomotives over horsepower in 1830: " ...there was no reason to expect any material improvement in the breed of horses, while in my judgment the man was not living who knew what the breed of locomotives was to place at command."

How much of the seller's story was truth and how much fiction is a matter of conjecture. Some of it is almost certainly false. Allen was not yet 60 at the time of the outbreak of war in 1861, and was a partner in a New York marine engineering firm. Since he did not marry until he was 32, he could hardly have had a grandson old enough to serve in either army during the war period.

He did have a son and it is possible, though unlikely, that the son sided with the South, ( Mrs. Allen was the daughter of a Charleston minister.) Even so, he would have been more likely to serve under his own name or his mother's maiden name, Simmons, than that of "Brown."

Besides, the watch must have been one of Allen's cherished possessions, unlikely to be given away during his lifetime, even to his son. It commemorated a period of his life that he considered worth while and important. There is a possibility that it was presented to him as a token of appreciation for his pioneer work in behalf of the new railroad.

As chief engineer he was largely responsible for the route of the railroad, the kind of construction and the type of motive power.

True, the final decision in these matters had to be made by the company's board of directors, but they placed great reliance on Allen's recommendations. Probably there was no man on the American continent at the time better qualified to advise them.

For all his youth ( he was 27 when the SCC&RR engaged him as chief engineer in 1829) , Allen had considerable railroad experience though railroads themselves were in their infancy.

A graduate of Columbia College in New York ( 1823) , Allen had worked in the construction of two canals, the latter for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. This company constructed at the end of its canal a railroad line over the mountains from Honesdale to Carbondale, Pa.

Not a railroad in the sense we know it, this line was designed to be operated 1argely with inclined planes and stationary steam engines. But for one section of the line, locomotives were considered.

It was this event that cast young Horatio Allen in the role of railroad pioneer. In 1828 he boarded ship for EngIand with a commission from the D&H to buy strap iron rails and to observe the English railways then being built. If he considered it advisable, he had full authority to buy and import one or more British- built locomotives. He bought three.

He also told of the first night run of a locomotive in this country (below), when two platform cars were placed in front of the locomotive and a fire of pine knots in an iron basket on a bed of sand on the forward car served to light the way ahead.

Undoubtedly the experience gained on this trip helped win him the appointment as chief engineer of the South Carolina company. It gave him the opportunity to plan and build what was then the longest railroad in the world.

Allen left the company in 1835 after the successfully completion and early operation of the Charleston - Hamburg road. His later professional life led him to other successes and eventually to the presidency of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1871. ( Ties hopes to tell more fully, in some later issue, the story of this remarkable young engineer. ) But Allen always recalled with particular interest his part in the early development of railways.

Certainly, the watch that reappeared so briefly after a hundred years must have been a prized souvenir of those exciting times.

One part of the watch inscription remains unexplained - "Hands 1833." The date was that of the completion of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company's line to Hamburg. But the word "hands" remains a mystery.

So does the present whereabouts of the watch. At the time the watch was mentioned in a story in Rail- road Magazine in 1952, Southern made some inquiries. The Charlotte jeweler who had owned it was no longer in business and could not be located in Charlotte. There the story of Horatio Allen's watch reached a temporary end.

But perhaps some reader has seen the heirloom and can help Ties add a postscript to the story of what may be America's first railroad watch,