3 Dollars State Bank of Michigan

Michigan's free banking era produced hundreds of short-lived institutions, but the State Bank of Michigan was a state-chartered entity operating under stricter oversight than the wildcat banks that plagued the region through the 1840s and 1850s. By 1859 the American Bank Note Company, recently consolidated from several competing security printers, was producing notes for dozens of Midwestern banks from its New York facilities.

The Lyman's Protection overprint — a patented geometric lathe-work screen applied over the note's face — was marketed specifically as a counterfeit deterrent, making chemical alteration and photographic reproduction visible. Its presence here suggests the issuing bank paid the additional premium for the security feature, not all customers did.