SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) – A church that stumbled onto a valuable oil painting while cleaning out an old brick farmhouse more than 20 years ago has sold the work for $90,000, about three times more than church members hoped.

The Christ Congregational Church found the painting, an 1870 landscape of Maine’s Mount Katahdin by Virgil Macey Williams, in 1973 as members cleaned out a farmhouse in Yellow Spring, W.Va. They initially thought the dust-covered painting was trash.

Church member Mary Ann Peterson held onto the painting, keeping it under a couch, until her husband got curious about the work and took it to the Smithsonian Institution in hopes of learning more about it.

That’s when Christ Congregational Church discovered they were wise not to throw the painting away. Now identified as “View of Mt. Katahdin From the West Bank of the Penobscot River,” the landscape was one of many painted in the mid-19th century of the Maine outdoors.

Williams was a prolific painter who joined better-known artists such as Winslow Homer in focusing on pristine landscape in New England. The church lent the Williams piece to the Smithsonian and a Montgomery County museum, and decided earlier this year to sell it.

Church leaders thought the piece might fetch $30,000. At an auction last month, it went for $90,000.

“It was amazing,” Rev. Sandy Dodson told The Washington Post. “We almost threw the painting away.”

The buyer, who was not identified, plans to donate the painting to the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine, the newspaper reported.

After the auction house commission, the church will receive $82,800 it plans to use to restore the farmhouse for use as a retreat and summer camp.

“It was wonderful because we know that the church will put the money to wonderful use,” said Virginia Weschler of Weschler’s auction house.

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Information from: The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com

AP-ES-10-14-07 1707EDT