ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Much of the fine East Tennessee antique furniture and silver collection of the late Frances and Jack Overall is going to be coming back home to Greeneville and the area.

Dr. Frances Bernard Overall, a professor of English at Tusculum College for many years, and her husband, Thomas W. "Jack" Overall, a Greeneville attorney and former U.S. magistrate, spent years during the 1950s collecting high-quality antique Tennessee furniture and antique silver.

Some of the furniture was made in Greene County itself and has been described as having been produced by the best local craftsmen of the period.

Dr. Overall died in 2000, her husband in 2004. In the years since then, their daughter and only child, television and film actress Park Overall, selected from her parents' collection the pieces she wished to keep.

This year she decided to ask widely-known Brunk Auctions of Asheville to auction the balance of the furniture and silver.

The much-anticipated sale took place Saturday, with an enthusiastic group of more than 20 Greene Countians among the crowd that filled the main room of the Tunnell Road auction house here.

When Andrew Brunk clanked the gavel on Lot #269, the final piece of the collection to be sold, it was clear that almost a fourth of the 175 Overall "lots" --- and possibly more -- would be coming home to Greeneville or the area.

Greeneville attorney John T. Milburn Rogers, a longtime antique collector and a close friend of the Overalls for many years, was the biggest individual buyer, with 30 lots.

His purchases included the "Widow Bales" tall chest from the Camp Creek area, which fetched $16,000.

But the largest price paid for any one object was $34,000, a purchase by Mary Jo Case of Kingsport.

Mrs. Case is considered one of the most prolific and knowledgeable authorities on early American and Southern furniture, according to Rogers.

"Mary Jo has always been my competition [in antique auction purchases]," Rogers said good-naturedly after the sale.

The auction appeared, by unofficial estimate, to have brought approximately $190,000 in all.

Park Overall, who has a home both in Greeneville and in California, did not attend the sale.

Brunk Auctions also handled the 2006 auction sale of the famed antique collection of the late Richard Harrison Doughty, of Greeneville, a friend of the late Mr. and Mrs. Overall who was noted both as a Greeneville historian and as a collector of early American and other antiques.

Interestingly, several of the finest pieces of the Doughty collection were also bought by Greene Countians, including Rogers.

Additional information concerning the auction will be published in The Greeneville Sun next week.