CLINTON — It’s C.H. Moore’s house, which houses his library, which houses his books and, of course, his portrait.  And, there are a number of other of Moore’s items as well.  But, for a long time, the house apparently did not house C.H. Moore’s bed.  Thanks to a generous St. Louis area resident, that is no longer the case.

Now in his second-floor bedroom adjacent to the upper level of the library, Moore’s bed was passed down through the family.

“It was Betsy O’Herin, of St. Louis, who had the bed,” said Joey Woolridge, DeWitt County Museum manager.

Woolridge thought O’Herin might be Moore’s great-great granddaughter but wasn’t certain.

“She passed away, and her daughter called and asked if we would like to have C.H. Moore’s bed.”

Woolridge does not know the age of the bed or when he owned it.

“I don’t know, is this the last bed he had?  Did he have the bed here; is it a bed from the 1850s?”

The C.H. Moore Homestead manor was completed in 1867.

“But, we do know it was his bed,” Woolridge said.

She said if it is the last bed he owned then it is from the house and is in the room where he used it and where he died.

The bed that had been on display in Moore’s bedroom was moved across the hallway into another bedroom.  Other beds, too, were moved in the process, one going into storage.

“They had to do this whole music bed thing,” Woolridge said.

In fact, there is some documentation about other pieces of furniture in the house and where they were, at least at some point, located in the home.

In March 1905, a local school girl wrote an essay about the Moore house and included descriptions of some of its contents.

“Mr. Moore would have been gone by then, so it must have been his widow who let her come in.”

In her letter, the Kent girl wrote about furnishings, paintings, “and where things were situated,” Woolridge said.  “So, it’s a good clue about what’s original.”

In the meantime, pending other information, Woolridge knows at least one of Moore’s beds now occupies his master suite, and the public is welcome to see it along with the rest of the house.

The museum’s annual quilt show begins today.