Gwen and Vernon Robertson stopped by yesterday on their way to the Big Horn for the
summer, and had her father, John R. Stevens with them. I asked Brother Stevens to show
me his hand and tell me the story of the scar on his left hand. This is his story:
It was a spring morning in 1899 that John and his cousin decided it was time to dock the
lamb. (that was to cut the tail off). Because the other boy didn't want to hold the lamb,
John took hold of the four feet with one hand, and the tail in the other, holding the tail
across the chopping block. The cousin raised the ax high and swung, but his mark was
not sure, and he came down with force, cutting across the left hand of the 12-year-old
John.
It was Sunday morning and his mother had just called him to come and get ready to go to
church.
For some reason, he ran and jumped over a fence that was much higher than he usually
would jump. As he did so the hand flopped back over his wrist. He grabbed it and put it
back in place as he went to the house.
His mother scraped away the top ashes of the stove and then put the sterile white ash in
the wound to stop the bleeding, then rushed him to the midwife in Parowan, but she was
ill and unable to give any assistance. Her two sons were visiting and one held John on his
lap while the other was to sew up the cut. He had no experience in such matters, and all
of the blood and flesh made him so ill that he would take one stitch and then have to
leave until he could get enough strength to come back and take one more stitch. For
seven stitches the youth sat and waited for the repair work to be completed. They were
large stitches and the scars of every one still shows across the back of his hand. *
The hand was bandaged, and healed without any difficulty. One day later as they
examined it they found that the wound went the entire way around the hand, and had
completely severed it - every bone, nerve and sinew of his hand had been cut through,
and none of them set or tied, and yet it had healed.
Later when John was visiting his Grandfather Eyre's home Pres. Lorenzo Snow stopped
at the Eyre home and they showed him John's hand. Pres. Snow said it was a good thing
that they had lived away from medical help, because if he had been in Salt Lake City,
surely the doctor would have removed his hand at the wrist.
His hand is almost perfect and he has used it all the rest of his 91 years, chopping with an
ax, pitching hay, shoveling or any of the many things a man and a farmer was required to
do. He still has no arthritis or rheumatism in his hand and showed me what a firm
handclasp he still has.
The scar shows the cut was from a point inside his thumb across his hand diagonally to
the outside near the wrist. Miracles were many as the Saints colonized the west and lived
the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.
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