• Ephraim traveled to Utah as a returning Mormon Battalion veteran in the Levi W. Hancock/Jefferson Hunt/James Pace/Andrew Lytle Company in 1847. He later participated as one of the rescuers that were sent out in the winter of 1856 to assist the members of the Church stranded in Wyoming. in 1857, he completed a mail express trip. There is record of him captaining another company from California in 1860, in which there was at least one family of emigrants, but it is uncertain if that was another Express Mail or if the train had another purpose.

Levi W. Hancock/Jefferson Hunt/James Pace/Andrew Lytle Company (1847)

• Age at Departure: 21

Rescue Companies (1856)

• Age at Departure: 30

Ephraim K. Hanks Mail Express (1857)

• Age at Departure: 31
• Company Captain

Ephraim K. Hanks Company (1860)

• Age at Departure: 33
• Company Captain

Sources

• Daniel W. Jones, Forty Years Among the Indians (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1890), 62-75.
• Ephraim Knowlton Hanks, Biographical sketches, 1891-2013.
• Find a Grave
• Handcart Veterans Association. Handcart Veterans Association scrapbook, 1906-1914, folder 7. 
• James G. Willie Emigrating Company journal, 1856 May-November, 16-53.
• Norma Baldwin Ricketts, The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1848 (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), 23.
• Patience L. Archer reminiscences, undated, 57-92.
• Robert T. Burton diaries, 1856-1907; Record book, circa 1856 October-November.
• Spencer, Claudius to Brigham Young, 12 November 1856. Brigham Young office files 1832-1878, General Incoming Correspondence.
• "The Eastern Mail," Deseret News , 1 July 1857.
• Utah State History Cemeteries and Burials Database.
• Wardle, Isaac John, Autobiographical sketch [n.d.], [2].