The Biscuit Miracle — Ann Rowley's Two Sea Biscuits Feed Eight Starving Children

In the fall of 1856, Ann Jewell Rowley, a widowed English convert and member of the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company, was crossing the Wyoming plains with her seven children. Food had run out. The men had left camp to hunt buffalo. Night was falling and there was nothing to eat.

Ann knelt in prayer. As she did, she remembered two hard sea biscuits that had been at the bottom of her trunk since the ocean voyage months earlier. They were so hard they could not be broken. She wrote in her personal journal:

'Surely, that was not enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and 2 fishes were not enough to feed 5,000 people either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it. So, with God’s help, nothing is impossible. I found the biscuits and put them in a dutch oven and covered them with water and asked for God’s blessing. Then I put the lid on the pan and set it on the coals. When I took off the lid a little later, I found the pan filled with food. I kneeled with my family and thanked God for his goodness. That night my family had sufficient food.'

The children had also been chewing loose rawhide strips from the cart wheels to survive. This miracle of multiplication — consciously compared by Ann to Christ feeding the five thousand — sustained the family through one of the most desperate nights of the entire pioneer trek.

Ann Rowley's family survived the crossing. Her account was preserved in her personal journal, held in the LDS Church History archives, and was cited by Elder Marcus B. Nash at General Conference in November 2012. Her story was also dramatized in the 2011 film '17 Miracles' directed by T.C. Christensen.

The same account is retold for children in the March 2025 issue of the Friend magazine, presenting Jane (representing Ann's daughter) as the point-of-view character.