Ephraim Knowlton Hanks: “Yes, I Will Go”

Question: How did Ephraim K. Hanks receive the call to assist the handcart pioneers during the snowstorms?

Few figures embody the rugged spirit of the American frontier and the deep faith of the early Latter-day Saint pioneers as vividly as Ephraim Knowlton Hanks. A sailor turned soldier, a frontiersman turned rescuer, and a patriarch who helped settle remote corners of Utah, Hanks lived a life of adventure and service. His story stretches from the canals of Ohio to the deserts of California, from the icy rivers of Wyoming to the red rock cliffs of Wayne County, Utah. Today he is remembered above all for his role in the 1856 handcart rescue, where his quick obedience to a spiritual prompting and his arrival with desperately needed buffalo meat saved countless lives. Yet his life was far broader—one of duty and devotion.

Early Life in Ohio (1826–1845)

Ephraim Knowlton Hanks was born on March 21, 1826, in Madison, Ohio, to Benjamin Hanks and Martha Knowlton.¹ The Hanks family lived a modest farm life in the Western Reserve, a region of Ohio heavily influenced by New England culture and religion. From an early age, Ephraim was known for his strength, energy, and restless nature. He acquired skills in farming, blacksmithing, and woodcraft, skills that would later serve him well on the frontier.²

At sixteen, restless for adventure, Hanks left home to work as a boatman on the Erie Canal.³ Soon afterward, he enlisted in the United States Navy, traveling to ports across the Atlantic and gaining his first taste of life beyond Ohio. This exposure to hardship and discipline shaped him into a man of resilience and adaptability. By his late teens, he had become both worldly and physically hardened. These qualities would later mark him as a natural leader in pioneer life.

Conversion to the Latter-day Saint Faith (1845–1846)

When Hanks returned to Ohio in the mid-1840s, he found his family in religious transition. His brother Sidney had joined the Church.⁴ Intrigued, Ephraim studied the teachings and was baptized in 1845, just a year after the Prophet Joseph Smith’s martyrdom in Carthage, Illinois. His conversion coincided with the Saints’ forced departure from Nauvoo and their preparations for a massive migration west.

At only twenty years old, Ephraim joined the exodus from Nauvoo in early 1846, driving wagons across Iowa toward Winter Quarters.⁵ For the young sailor-turned-pioneer, this was only the beginning of a lifetime of journeys.

The Mormon Battalion (1846–1847)

In July 1846, U.S. Army recruiters arrived at the Mormon camps in Iowa, requesting volunteers for the Mexican–American War. Hanks enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, Company B, marching nearly 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California, the longest infantry march in U.S. history.⁶

Though the battalion saw little combat, the journey was grueling. Soldiers endured scorching deserts, mountains, and shortages of food and water.⁷ For Hanks, the experience tested both body and spirit, but he emerged stronger and deeply loyal to his fellow Saints. Discharged in California in 1847, he resisted the lure of the soon-to-begin Gold Rush and instead made his way back to rejoin his people in the Salt Lake Valley.

By late October 1847, Hanks arrived in the valley, becoming part of the earliest wave of Mormon settlers.⁸

Early Utah Years: Militia, Mail, and Mountain Dell (1847–1856)

Hanks quickly established himself as a man of action. In 1848, he married Harriet Amelia Decker, beginning the family life that would eventually expand into plural households.⁹

In 1850, he fought in the Battle at Fort Utah, part of the conflict between the Latter-day Saint settlers and the Timpanogos Utes. Though violent and tragic, the campaign revealed Hanks’s loyalty to his leaders and his willingness to serve.¹⁰

From 1851 onward, Hanks became one of Utah’s most reliable mail carriers, riding the perilous 1,200-mile trail between Salt Lake City and the Missouri River dozens of times.¹¹ In these years, he founded the Mountain Dell relay station, a critical stop for mail riders, emigrants, and later the Pony Express.¹² This work cemented his reputation as a tireless, dependable frontiersman.

The Handcart Rescue of 1856

The defining moment of Hanks’s life came in October 1856, when news reached Salt Lake that the Willie and Martin handcart companies were stranded in Wyoming snowstorms. Brigham Young issued a call for volunteers, but Hanks had already felt a divine prompting.

Andrew Jensen recorded the following as told to him by Ephraim: “In the fall of 1856, I had occasion to stop once over night with Gurnsey Brown, in Draper…Being somewhat fatigued after the day’s journey, I retired to rest quite early, and while I still lay wide awake in my bed I heard a voice calling me by name, and then saying: ‘The handcart people are in trouble and you are wanted; will you go and help them?’ …Without hesitation I answered Yes, I will go if I am called.’ I then turned around to go to sleep, but had laid only a few minutes when the voice called a second time, repeating almost the same words, and then repeated a third time.¹³

“When I got up the next morning I said to Brother Brown, `The handcart people are in trouble, and I have promised to go out and help them’…I hastened to Salt Lake City, and arrived there on the Saturday, preceding the Sunday (October 5th) on which the call was made for volunteers to go out and help the last handcart companies in…”

The next day, Ephraim was one of the men in the sixteen wagons that headed out from Salt Lake, loaded with food and supplies. Some of the advance relief wagons, plodding through deep snow, found the Willie handcart company on the Sweetwater River on October 21st.

The rescue train was then divided into two parties. About half, under Captain Kimball, remained with Willie’s Company to help them get to Salt Lake. The other half, led by Captain Grant, continued on another hundred miles eastward in bitter winter conditions in search of the Martin company.

During the next five days, Ephraim, with others in Grant’s party, traveled one hundred miles through deep snow and reached Devil’s Gate. They had been out as far as Pacific Springs without finding the handcarts and had concluded that the Martin Company had gone into a camp for the winter or had perished.

Arza and Ephraim asked the company to camp for a few days while they and Dan [Jones or Johnson] went on to try and find the Martin handcart company. Dan had to take one of the sick mules back to camp, so Ephraim continued with Arza. One evening after making camp, Ephraim recorded the following:

“Now, I am a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer…But when I, after praying as I did on that lonely night in the South Pass, looked around me and spied a buffalo bull within fifty yards of my camp, my surprise was complete; I had certainly not expected so immediate an answer to my prayer….Taking deliberate aim at the animal, my first shot brought him down..it then rolled down into the very hollow where I was encamped…

Ephraim, thinking he might find more buffalo, headed out early the next morning. “Early the next morning I happened upon a herd of buffalo, and killed a nice cow…I skinned and dressed the cow; then cut up part of its meat in long strips and loaded my horses with it…”

By the time Ephraim had loaded up the meat on his horses, it was getting dark. He happened to notice at some distance a light twinkle and then another. As he rode toward them, more lights came into view. He soon realized he had found the Martin handcart company.

With shouts of joy, the people ran toward him. He turned the meat over to Edward Martin, the captain of the company, and explained that there were two wagon loads of provisions a short distance away that he and his partner would bring to them the next day.

Ephraim then hastened back to Arza. Early the next morning, they went back and notified the rescue company that they had found the Martin handcart company. They guided them to the camp and helped distribute the flour and quilts from the rescue wagons.

Hanks and Azra administered to the sick, and Hanks amputated frostbitten limbs. Survivors later testified of his priesthood blessings and crude but effective surgeries that spared them pain.¹⁵

The handcart company then had to move on to find a sheltered place. The sick and dying were loaded into the rescue wagons, and they moved along the Sweetwater.

They were to cross over the River and shelter in a depression later known as Martin’s Cove. It was November 3rd, and the River was filled with floating ice. Three eighteen-year-old boys belonging to the relief party carried nearly every member of the handcart company across the stream: C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball.

Many of the Saints were loaded into wagons and taken to South Pass, where Redick N. Allred had held a few rescue wagons instead of returning to Salt Lake. Ephraim and Arza stayed with the Martin Handcart Saints until they arrived in Salt Lake on November 30th, 1856.

There were 622 people in the Martin Handcart Company, and between 135 and 150 died, and many others endured frozen limbs. If Arza and Ephraim hadn’t continued on, it is very probable that many more, if not all, would have perished.¹⁶

For this act of faith and service, Hanks became a hero remembered as an “angel of mercy.”

Scouting, the Utah War, and Mining (1857–1870s)

In 1857, as tensions rose between the U.S. government and Utah, Hanks served as a scout for the Nauvoo Legion, tracking the movements of Johnston’s Army.¹⁷ He also participated in one of the fastest mail runs on record, racing letters from Missouri to Salt Lake in 22 days.¹⁸

In the 1860s, he turned to prospecting and mining, filing some of the earliest claims in the mountains above what became Park City.¹⁹ Though Brigham Young discouraged mining, Hanks recognized the region’s potential. Later, as the mines boomed, historians would note his foresight.

Family Life and Plural Marriage

Hanks participated in plural marriage, a common practice among the early Saints. In addition to Harriet Amelia Decker, he married Jane Maria Capener in 1856 and Thisbe Quilley Read in 1862. He briefly married Hannah Hardy the same year as Jane, but the union dissolved quickly.²⁰

With his wives, Hanks fathered 26 children and adopted a Native American boy and girl.²¹ His households reflected the complexity of early Utah polygamy: demanding, resource-intensive, but also deeply bonded by faith. His wives and children remembered him as affectionate and devoted, even while he was often away on expeditions.

Later Years in Wayne County (1880s–1896)

In the 1880s, Hanks accepted a church call to help settle Wayne County, a rugged region near Capitol Reef. He established Floral Ranch near present-day Bicknell, Utah, farming and ranching into his final years.²² In 1893, he was ordained a Patriarch, a tribute for his lifelong dedication to the Lord.²³

He passed away on June 9, 1896, at age 70, at his Floral Ranch home²⁴. His death marked the end of an era – he was one of the last surviving members of the Mormon Battalion and one of the few remaining pioneers who had been adults in Nauvoo.

Hanks was buried not far from his ranch. When word spread of his passing, an extraordinary tribute took place: an estimated one thousand Native Americans gathered on the cliffs above his ranch and stood in silent respect.²⁵

These were likely members of local Paiute or Ute bands who had come to know Hanks as a friend. The image of hundreds of indigenous people lining the red rock ledges in silence to honor the deceased frontiersman is a powerful testimony to the esteem in which he was held across cultural lines. It is said that no speeches were made – the presence of the crowd itself was the eulogy.

Endnotes

1. B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 3 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1930), 246.
2. Sidney A. Hanks and Thomas C. Romney, Scouting for the Mormons on the Great Frontier: The Life and Adventures of Eph Hanks (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1948), 3–6.
3. Ibid., 12.
4. Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1892), 359.
5. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 3:255–258.
6. Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 103.
7. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 3:272–275.
8. Whitney, History of Utah, 1:375.
9. Kate B. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, vol. 10 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1967), 34.
10. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 3:298–300.
11. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 10:41–43.
12. Stanley B. Kimball, Historic Sites and Markers Along the Mormon and Other Great Western Trails (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 215.
13. Hanks and Romney, Scouting for the Mormons, 45–47.
14. Ibid., 51–52.
15. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 4:28–31.
16. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 10:58–60.
17. Will Bagley, The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857–1858 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 79.
18. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 4:77–78.
19. Ronald W. Walker, Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 143.
20. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 10:67–70.
21. Hanks and Romney, Scouting for the Mormons, 92.
22. Whitney, History of Utah, 4:112.
23. Carter, Our Pioneer Heritage, 10:81.
24. Roberts, Comprehensive History, 6:345.

Bibliography

• Arrington, Leonard J., and Davis Bitton. The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
• Bagley, Will. The Mormon Rebellion: America’s First Civil War, 1857–1858. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.
• Carter, Kate B. Our Pioneer Heritage. Vol. 10. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1967.
• Hanks, Sidney Alvarus, and Thomas C. Romney. Scouting for the Mormons on the Great Frontier: The Life and Adventures of Eph Hanks. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1948.
• Kimball, Stanley B. Historic Sites and Markers Along the Mormon and Other Great Western Trails. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
• Roberts, B. H. A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1930.
• Walker, Ronald W. Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
• Whitney, Orson F. History of Utah. 4 vols. Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1892.

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