Zadoc Knapp Judd: Healed of Chronic Croup as a Child — and His Weak Ankles Strengthened on the Mormon Battalion March

Zadoc Knapp Judd (1827–1907) was born in Upper Canada and converted to the Church in childhood. In his autobiography, dictated near the end of his life, he recorded two distinct healings that he regarded as evidence of God's hand over his life.

The first occurred around age eight or nine. Judd had suffered throughout his childhood from recurring, debilitating attacks of phthisic (a form of severe asthma or croup). During one such episode, the LDS missionaries John E. Page and James Bleaksley were visiting his father's home. The elders proposed administering to the sick boy. With his father's consent, they did so — and Judd wrote plainly: 'I was speedily healed and that was the last attack I ever had of that complaint.'

The second miracle was quieter but no less striking. From early childhood, Judd had been burdened with weak, unreliable ankles. The condition plagued him throughout his youth; on the family's winter exodus to the United States, he was so crippled by the walking that he had to be carried the last part of the journey and couldn't stand for days afterward. He noted: 'My weak ankles always did bother me until I enlisted in the Mormon Battalion. There I walked it all the way.'

The Mormon Battalion march covered roughly 2,000 miles — from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego, California — through desert, mountain, and wilderness. It is the longest infantry march in American history. That a young man with lifelong ankle weakness walked every mile of it, without recorded complaint or injury, was something Judd himself attributed to the protecting hand of the Lord over the Saints who kept His commandments.

Judd went on to settle in southern Utah and serve as a faithful Latter-day Saint throughout a long life.