State of New York (“SNY”) Militia Civil War Era Belt Plate, "Puppy Paw" version.  This very example is published and pictured as plate example #1 on p. 249 of The Hammond Civil War Collection: Fifty Years Searching the Virginia Woods by Mike O'Donnell & Howard Crouch. It was a part of the famed Richard M. Hammond Collection and is noted as missing the single hook.  An early Battlefield "pick-up"