It’s a mystery.

There’s no question the scene is Apponaug Four Corners at the turn of the century. The picture depicts a horse-drawn trolley and there’s no mistaking the City Hall tower, with its green-copper cap. There’s another telltale feature, the Apponaug fountain, which was a feature of the corners and a watering place for horses. The fountain is a centerpiece to the Dorothy Mayor Park next to St. Barnabas Church.

But nobody knows where the painting, which is in three pieces and at least 12 feet long, came from and who painted it. That’s vital information for Jan Marshall of the City Clerk’s office to apply for a National Endowment of the Humanities grant to pay for restoring and framing the mural.

Marshall’s passion to preserve city records is well known by her fellow workers in the City Clerk’s office. Like a bloodhound, she has sniffed out grants that have enabled the city to preserve many records once thought to be everlasting that are actually fading away. Hundreds of land records have been copied and bound into handsome books that line the shelves of the vault, thanks to a grant from the Champlin Foundations. Many more books and their records should be copied and preserved but, at $1,000 a book, the money isn’t there.

Marshall is especially pleased with her latest project, the preservation of discharge papers of an estimated 4,000 Warwick veterans dating back to the Second World War. These, too, were fading. Marshall applied for and won a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Now the records reside in handsome red binders. Already the effort has paid off.

She recalled one distraught veteran whose grandmother had gone through his belongings and tossed them out. He went online, thinking he could track down a copy. Even after sharing his Social Security number and paying $20, he came up empty-handed.

“They’re free here. It’s a service we provide,” said Marshall. She said the veteran was practically in tears when she located his papers. Proof of his service was needed for certain benefits.

Whether she will be as successful with uncovering the story behind the mural remains to be seen.

A couple of years ago, City Clerk Marie Ahlert casually mentioned that she found three canvasses rolled up in her office closet. Marshall made a mental note, but it wasn’t until this year that she asked to see them.

Marshall confesses she doesn’t know a lot about the preservation of art. She searched for some identification, but there wasn’t as much as a signature. She concluded the mural had been removed from a wall; plaster remnants are stuck to the yellowed canvas.

Marshall called Michael Holland, who formally owned and operated Holland Gallery on Greenwich Avenue. He concluded whoever removed the mural knew what they were doing and said that to restore and frame the three panels would cost about $3,000.

Marshall thought it might be more, but even mustering those funds at this time can be challenging. She hopes to win a grant that would pay for at least half of the restoration work.

But she’s also aware that grants to preserve historic works are a matter of what’s considered historic. While records dating back to the 1800s may seem historic by Warwick standards, in many cases, they don’t meet grant criteria.

And what about the murals?

Marshall doesn’t know. If she can find the story and the name of the artist, however, the scene of Apponaug Four Corners might once again provide a glimpse into Warwick’s past.