GREENEVILLE — Louise Cantrell has asked several times for someone to take the 14 deerskins out of her office at the Greene County courthouse. She needs the bottom drawer for maps.
The skins are carried on a 1788 State of Franklin payroll as “received, pending.” Cantrell, a deputy clerk, inherited them in 2006. Her predecessor showed her where the coffee filters were and then opened the drawer.
“She said I’d want to know about these if anybody asked,” Cantrell said. “Nobody did for a long time. I had my purse in there once before I knew what it was.”
The county has since asked her twice to put a total on the payroll. Both times she counted the skins and asked which year’s price she should use. She has not had an answer. A note stapled to the first request tells her to see the previous total, which was never entered.
The ledger does not say who the skins were owed to. There is a surname under a water stain, and she won’t guess at it.
“I thought it might be Bell,” she said. “Then a man came in to look at it and he said it was probably an amount. He took a picture. I don’t know what he did with it. He was mostly here about his grandmother.”
Her nephew offered to look up a price online, but the figure included shipping, and she could see that causing trouble later.
Cantrell keeps the requests in a folder next to the ledger, and the maps are still on top of the cabinet.