• 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

• Broomhead, William, Diary, 1856 Oct-1857 Apr.
• Burton, Robert Taylor, Diaries 1856-1907, Record book, circa 1856 October-November.
• Find a Grave (Website)
• Handcart Veterans Association. Handcart Veterans Association scrapbook, 1906-1914, folder 7. 
• Hanks, Ephraim Knowlton, Autobiographical sketch, in Biographical sketches 1891- , reel 44, box 45, fd. 7, item 12.
• James G. Willie Emigrating Company journal, 1856 May-November, 16-53.
• Jones, Daniel W., Forty Years Among the Indians (1890), 62-75.
• Patience L. Archer reminiscences, undated, 57-92.
• Ricketts, Norma Baldwin. The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1848, Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996, 23.
• 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].