Reg Tidwell Jr.

Reg Tidwell Jr., called Junior and identified as the crying boy, is Sara Tidwell’s son and Son Tidwell’s younger half-brother. His death, after Sara and Kito had already been murdered, completes the story of the violence directed at the Tidwell family and shows how the community’s hostility persisted beyond the original crimes. The account reaches him through Jo Noonan’s notes and the later explanation of what happened on the TR.

Identity and Family

Junior belonged to the Tidwell family community living near the lake. By September 1901, the Red-Tops had played their final show in Castle County, and the circumstances surrounding Sara and her child’s murder were widely known among people on the TR. Son Tidwell, Sara’s brother and Junior’s half-brother, continued to press for answers after the murders.

The later account identifies the crying boy as Reg Tidwell Jr. It connects the mysterious child’s story to the history of the family’s persecution: the boy was not an unknown figure, but a member of the family whose losses had already left Son seeking the truth and justice from local authorities.

The Search for Sara and Her Son

During August, Son repeatedly approached County Sheriff Nehemiah Bannerman. At first, he wanted a search organized to find Sara and Junior alive. As he accepted that they were dead, his aim shifted to locating their bodies and then identifying their killers. He believed they had been murdered, rather than simply disappeared.

The initial response seemed sympathetic, but that support did not protect the family. Jo’s notes recorded the history, while town histories omitted it. By the time the Red-Tops played the Castle County Fair, their community near the lake was beginning to break apart. The separation of the family from the wider township was already under way before Junior’s death.

The Trap and Its Consequences

By Labor Day, active harassment had begun and grew more frightening day by day. Son refused to leave until he learned what had happened to Sara and Junior. He kept his blood relatives in the meadow even after other members of the group had moved to safer or more welcoming places.

Junior often went alone to a clearing in the woods about a mile east of what later became known as Tidwell’s Meadow. A large birch cross stood there, marking a place where the Black community held services after local churches had closed their doors to them. Junior went to pray or sit quietly, and people in the township knew his routine.

Someone hid a leghold trap beneath leaves and needles on the narrow path Junior used. The account does not establish who set it. It considers it likely that neither Jared Devore nor the loggers associated with him did so, since they were keeping away from Sara and Son’s people after the murders; the trap-setter may not have been one of their friends, either. The exact intention is likewise uncertain. The account suggests the trap may have been meant to injure and intimidate Junior rather than kill him, but makes clear that the outcome was fatal.

Junior stepped into the trap and was not found for some time. He later died of blood poisoning. After his death, Son gave up the effort to stay in the area. He had other children to consider, as well as the people who had remained with him. The family gathered its clothes and guitars and left. Jo traced some of their descendants to North Carolina, where many still lived.

Narrative Significance

Junior’s story is recovered through Jo’s research rather than preserved in the town’s official histories. The contrast between the recorded notes and the silence of those histories makes his fate part of a broader account of local concealment: the community’s hostility and the family’s losses were known to many, yet the public record did not acknowledge them.

His death also marks the final break between Son’s search for justice and the possibility of remaining on the TR. The trap did not resolve the earlier murders or reveal their perpetrators; it added another loss and drove the surviving family away. The account thus presents Junior’s fate not as an isolated accident, but as a consequence of sustained harassment in a place where the Tidwells had already been made unwelcome.