Ephraim Hanks Heals Thomas Dobson’s Frozen Feet and Dying Illness Near Fort Bridger—Dobson Rises, Sings, and Dances (1856)

During the 1856 rescue efforts near Fort Bridger, nineteen-year-old Thomas Dobson of the Martin Handcart Company was suffering severely after crossing much of the plains without shoes. His mother, Alice Pickup Dobson, asked Ephraim Knowlton Hanks to administer to him. Dobson’s big toes were badly frozen, his feet had swollen so much that shoes would not fit, and his companions expected him to die that night. Hanks wrapped Dobson’s feet in cotton and promised him that they would be made whole if he stood, sang the handcart song, and believed Hanks’s words. Hanks administered to him, and Dobson was immediately healed: he rose, dressed himself, and, when a fiddling and dancing began in camp after a couple married, sang and danced a hornpipe on the inboard of a wagon Hanks procured. Dobson survived the trek, later crossed the plains again as a Pony Express rider, served a mission to England, and lived to recount the experience in the 1906 and 1907 Deseret News accounts of handcart veterans.