A well-circulated albeit scarce example of this popular design issued under the Series of 1886. The Fr. 293 represents less than 200 examples recorded between both Track & Price and the Gengerke Census and offers everyones favorite oddly shaped portrait of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks who died in 1885 less than a year after being elevated to that office in 1884. Hendricks a long-time figure in Indiana politics had previously served as a Representative and later as that states Senator from 1863 to 1869. Hendricks would later hold the governorship after two unsuccessful bids in 1860 and 1868. He would later be selected as the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1884 as a means to secure the electoral votes of Indiana which was one of the decisive states in the Electoral College that cycle along with the likes of New York. Hendricks is one of six Vice Presidents to call Indiana home along with more recent counterparts such as Dan Quayle and Mike Pence and one of four Hoosiers to hold that position over a roughly 50 year period from Schuyler Colfax to Thomas R. Marshall. One could even argue that this note reflects the outsized influence that Indiana had on elections during the second half of the Nineteenth Century owing to the selection of Hendricks.From the Hararn Family Collection.
