Officials want to find out if a bed found in a storage shed is the one where President Abraham Lincoln slept during an overnight stay in Pittsburgh in 1861.

ADVERTISEMENT

Lincoln was president-elect, en route to Washington for his inauguration, when he spent Valentine's Day at the Monongahela House Hotel. The hotel renamed his room in his honor -- it had previously been named after an earlier guest, the Prince of Wales -- and used it only for the most distinguished visitors.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Presidents Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley slept in Lincoln's bed.

Allegheny County acquired the bed when the hotel was torn down in 1935. But when Dr. Brad Hoch, a Gettysburg pediatrician, tried to find it eight years ago no one with the county knew where it was.

Workers trying to fix a water leak found what could be the bed, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. It is being kept in the storage shed under police guard while officials summon experts to determine if it is indeed the bed Lincoln slept in.