More than 40 admirers of antiques and old homes, many of them professionals in the study of the "decorative arts," visited Greeneville on Tuesday as part of a "winter study trip" to East Tennessee organized by a respected North Carolina museum.

The "2009 Winter Study Trip" was organized on behalf of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), which is itself part of the Old Salem Museum and Gardens, in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Most in the group were from North Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia, but Texas, Kentucky and Georgia were also represented.

Sally Gant, director of education for MESDA, said, "Every year, our museum, which studies the decorative arts and antiquities of the South, takes a field trip to one of the regions of the South, to learn more about its antiquities, see the work of its craftspeople, and learn about its culture.

"This year, we are visiting East Tennessee, because this is an area that is particularly rich in wonderful heritage of craftsmanship and history.

"There are a lot of exciting discoveries being made here, and we wanted to come to the area, visit some of your museum houses and collections, and study the decorative arts that are here.

"It's a wonderful region."

Daniel Ackermann, associate curator for MESDA, said Thursday afternoon that, when the tour participants get home, "Once they take a nap and a deep breath, [the participants] are going to tell their friends that East Tennessee is a jewel. It really is a historical jewel.

"The comment I've heard again and again (from tour participants) is, 'I had no idea there was that much out there' in terms of history, antique furniture and housewares, and preserved homes and America's early frontier culture."

Ackermann said he personally plans to return to East Tennessee, and specifically to Greene County, to continue researching the Burgner cabinet-making brothers.

"What's fascinating" for someone who does research, Ackermann said about East Tennessee, "is how long people's memories are in this area."

He added, "Those memories have so much truth in them that gets lost" in many other areas. He said it has been wonderful "for the past few days to find that, place after place, people have done an amazing job of preserving those stories."

Thomas Sears, chairman of the advisory board of MESDA, said he has been involved in studying antiquities and decorative arts for 35 years.

Since retiring, he said, he has been able to take a number of MESDA field trips such as this one, and found them very enjoyable and educational.

"This is a special opportunity to be in East Tennessee, to see wonderful items that are directly correlated to the South," Sears said during a brief interview at the early Valentine Sevier home in Greeneville.

Sears said Mary Jo Case and her husband, Wayne, of Kingsport, "have been incredible, along with Robert and Jane Pearce (of Knoxville) and others, in arranging this tour and to have a unique opportunity to really experience East Tennessee and its antiquities in a wonderful way."

Mary Jo Case is a MESDA board member who lives in Kingsport. Her son, John Case, operates Case Antiques Auction in Knoxville, which conducted a Sept. 27 sale at which a recently-discovered "redware" pottery jar by 19th century Greene County potter John Alexander Lowe set a price record for Tennessee pottery.

Mrs. Case said she believes the tour has been so successful that MESDA "will want to come back in the near future," with another study group, "to learn what is in East Tennessee, especially in Greeneville."

Wayne and Mary Jo Case held a reception, and her son, John, conducted a pottery study for the group at their home Monday evening.

Earlier on Monday, the group visited Abingdon, Va., touring the William King Regional Center, lunching at the historic Martha Washington Inn before touring the Carter Mansion in Elizabethton.

The group spent Monday night at the MeadowView Conference Center in Kingsport.

On Tuesday morning, the group toured the early Valentine Sevier home on South Main Street, where they were hosted by Gregg Jones and Mrs. Helena Z. Jones, then toured the Nathanael Greene Museum and the Dickson-Williams Mansion before having lunch at the General Morgan Inn.

Sarah Webster, Wilhelmina Williams, and Haskell Fox Jr., all of whom are active members of the Dickson-Williams Historical Association, hosted the tours at the mansion.

The restored brick residence, built about 1820, was originally the famous home of Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Williams, and was the place where Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan spent his last night.

Williams said in an interview Wednesday that some members of the tour were interested primarily in furniture, others primarily in portraits. One tour member was a fibers expert, and one man was an expert in antique metals, and told the local hosts things they had not known, Williams said.

She said it was an honor to have the group visit, because "MESDA is considered the preeminent museum in the South" for decorative arts and antique furniture.

After lunch, the group visited the home of John and Donna Rogers to see their collection of antiques, followed by a visit to the home of Steve and Martha Ottinger, to see their antiques collection, before traveling on to Knoxville.

The group planned on Wednesday in Knoxville to tour the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Winston Beamer, who came to Greeneville for Tuesday's tour. Most of Wednesday was to be spent at the East Tennessee History Center, but a visit to the Ramsey House Museum was also planned.

On Thursday, the group was to visit the collection at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Pearce before returning to their own homes.

Gregg Jones welcomed the group to Greeneville. He noted that the original part of the early Valentine Sevier house is "the oldest standing structure in Greeneville," built about 1795 while Sevier was still in his teens.

Valentine Sevier, a prominent public official in Greeneville in the early 1800s, was the nephew of John Sevier, a leader of the "Overmountain Men" who fought and won the Battle of King's Mountain in the Revolutionary War; Sevier went on to become the first governor of Tennessee.

Jones explained that the home was later owned by Andrew Johnson, who renovated it. Jones said the house came into his family in the years after the Civil War.

He said the home was purchased for Jones' great-great-grandparents by Thomas Dickens Arnold, who served in Congress in the 1830s and 1840s and became a close friend and confidant of then-U.S. Rep. John Quincy Adams, the former U.S. President.

Arnold was first elected as an anti-Jacksonian Democrat, from the Knoxville area, and later as a Whig, from Greeneville.

After a redistricting in 1843, Arnold did not seek re-election, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who later became the nation's 17th president, won the seat.

In the 20th century, the house was the residence of the late Willliam H. and Quincy Marshall O'Keefe and then their daughter, the late Edith O'Keefe Susong, former publisher of the Sun.