The stink of gangrene wafting from the infected patient must have made everyone wince inside the Fort Ridgely infirmary.
The frozen patient was barely alive when some Dakota men discovered him in a western Minnesota snowdrift and brought him to the military hospital on Christmas Eve, 1865.
Benjamin Franklin Work, 28, had dropped his given name and assumed the patriot's after a Civil War desertion following the Battle of Shiloh. He rejoined the army a few months later — as Ben Franklin — and went to battle with Minnesota soldiers staging punitive raids on Indian villages in the Dakota Territory.
On a 30-day furlough to visit his wife in Blue Earth, Franklin's stagecoach became stuck in the deep and blinding snow of a Minnesota blizzard near Ortonville. Another rider died.
Two weeks after his rescue, Franklin's putrid wounds foretold a painful recovery. "A most offensive smell was emitted, in spite of the liberal use of disinfectants," fort surgeon Alfred Muller recorded in his notes from Jan. 10, 1866. "Both hands and forearms were completely mortified by freezing, both feet and legs as far as the upper third, both knees … all presenting a dark, bluish appearance with some swelling."
Dr. Muller and his wife and nurse, Eliza, first had to thaw the clothing off the frozen man. Ten days later, Muller removed the frostbitten tip of Franklin's nose. When he broached the subject of amputating Franklin's infected limbs, "the patient and his wife obstinately opposed" what the doctor called "operative interference."
Finally, 20 days into his hospital stay, Franklin succumbed to the inevitable — refusing anesthetics but consenting to having his hands and wrists amputated at the forearms.
"The great relief afforded by this operation," the surgeon noted, "so changed his former aversion to be operated on, that on the next day, he begged to have both legs amputated."
Franklin had survived Shiloh and the scorching heat and violence of the Dakota raids, but a nasty blizzard had rendered him a quadruple amputee.
Living off a $74 government pension for his military service, Franklin augmented his income by selling photo cards of himself — nattily dressed and using crutches. The photos made him a minor celebrity — well known enough that he was granted an audience with President Grover Cleveland in early 1889. Cleveland boosted his pension to $100 a month — a hefty sum in those days.
Franklin went on to father a son — who died after only 12 days. He and his wife, Georgianna, divorced after 30 years of marriage — a rarity in 1895. Only one in 3,000 marriages ended in divorce back then.
Franklin remarried a year later. Then, at age 62, he died suddenly from a burst blood vessel on Oct. 23, 1899, in Bangor, S.D. — his new home a few miles from where he camped in 1864 during the Indian war.
Franklin's story was all but forgotten when a military veteran and retired postal worker named Marlin Peterson clicked on the Internet in 2007 at his home in Mountain Lake, Minn., 50 miles south of Fort Ridgely. Peterson stumbled across an image of Franklin from the 1870s and purchased the postcard. His research over the next several years would take him to the Dakotas and to Franklin's hidden grave in southwest Iowa.
His efforts culminated last year with a meticulously researched, self-published, 75-page book: "Blizzard Ordeal of a Minnesota Cavalryman."
Like all riveting history, his tireless analysis of census and military records and old newspaper clippings unearthed its share of Eureka moments. With no personal letters or diaries available, Peterson first had to untangle the Benjamin Franklin Work birth name, the Civil War desertion and the re-christened identity of Ben Franklin.
He then discovered an error in Minnesota veterans records, which had Franklin buried in southern Minnesota — specifically Blue Earth City, Riverside Cemetery, lot No. 49, grave No. 1.
Working with fellow history buff, Franklin researcher and Faribault County historian Albert Russ, Peterson figured out that the Ben buried in Minnesota was Franklin's infant son, Bennie. The pair found Franklin's unmarked Iowa grave. They presented Franklin with a new military headstone last year during a ceremony at the Essex Cemetery in Page County, Iowa.
Peterson, a 34-year veteran of the Army Reserve, served during wartime deployments in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He notes that at least five soldiers in the Iraq and Afghan wars came home quadruple amputees. But while double arm grafts, counseling and multiple surgeries aid wounded warriors today, "such was not the case in 1866 when Private Benjamin Franklin left the hospital at Fort Ridgely."
He was simply released and sent out into a world where everything from buttoning clothes to climbing stairs was impossible for him.
"Benjamin Franklin was a veteran who deserved a dignified grave marker," Peterson says. "As one veteran to another, I hope that I was able to do some justice for the old cavalryman."
Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com.
