Onlookers flooded Buckhart as the search for Earnest Cagle Jr. continued. The labels — “To Gravel Pit,” “Car Parked Here,” Delay’s Tavern” — were added by the newspaper. (Photos courtesy State Journal-Register)
The final paragraph of this entry has been corrected. Our thanks to reader Bev P.
Two-year-old Earnest Cagle Jr. was asleep when his parents went into Cecil Delay’s bar in Buckhart about 11 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27, 1950. He was still sleeping when his father checked on him a couple of hours later.
No one ever saw little Earnest again.
Earnest Cagle Jr. (SJ-R)
Earnest Cagle Sr. (1915-82), who worked on a farm near Illiopolis, and wife Adeline (1917-56) set out for some late-hour drinking with all three of their children that night. They didn’t see any of their friends’ cars at the first bar they passed in Dawson, so they drove on to Buckhart.
Sangamon County Chief Deputy Sheriff William Barnett later outlined the Cagles’ activities to the Illinois State Journal.
Barnett stated that … the Cagle family had visited the tavern for the last three Saturdays. They reached the tavern about 11 p.m. last Saturday. Mr. and Mrs. Cagle, accompanied by their eldest daughter (Mary Lynn, age 3 – ed.) entered the tavern leaving Earnest in the car with his 1-year-old sister, Vicky Lorraine.
Cagle told Barnett he checked the car about 1 a.m. and found both children all right. The little boy was discovered missing about an hour later when the tavern closed and the Cagles returned to their car.
The Cagles, tavern patrons and Rochester volunteer firefighters began to look for the toddler – who, to compound the urgency, was diabetic – in the dark. By daylight, state police, county deputies, Boy Scouts and hundreds of unaffiliated volunteers were combing the area, aided by three planes from Springfield’s Capitol Aviation. State police in boats dragged a gravel pond two blocks from the tavern.
State police team drags gravel pit in case toddler wandered there.
They found no sign of the tiny (he weighed only 19½ pounds), blonde-haired boy. His mother said Earnest was wearing blue shorts, a yellow polo shirt, sandals and a red Hopalong Cassidy jacket when he vanished.
Dozens of onlookers crowded into Buckhart as the search continued, the Illinois State Journal reported on Wednesday.
An aura of mystery and suspense continued to hang over Buckhart for the third straight day yesterday. A posse of horsemen, chiefly from the Sangamon County Trail Riders, and several hundred searchers on foot, including 50 national guardsmen, searched along roads and fields until dark.
Barnett said the men had confined yesterday’s searching to the immediate area in which the boy disappeared. On Sunday and Monday a wider area had been combed. The banks of the Sangamon river were covered thoroughly yesterday.
Even after the searching ended yesterday hundreds of curiosity seekers poured into Buckhart, lining its few streets with cars and slowing traffic to a trickle. Both Buckhart taverns were doing a heavy business last night as about 1,000 persons waited for news that the boy had been found.
Adeline, Mary Ellen and Earnest Cagle Sr. in their car during the search for Earnest Jr.
As search after search failed, Earnest Cagle Sr. theorized that the boy had been abducted from the car. The car’s doors were too heavy for the toddler to manipulate, he said, and dust on the frame of the open windows was undisturbed. “And if he did get out of the car, would he have run away into the dark instead of going up to the lighted tavern?” Cagle said.
Adeline Cagle wondered if her son had somehow climbed into another automobile. Both parents underwent questioning, including lie-detector tests. Investigators also interviewed 30-some other people. “All known sex offenders in the area were rounded up for questioning,” the Illinois State Register reported.
The Journal’s editorial page ascribed the child’s disappearance to Adeline and Earnest Cagle Sr.’s “casual neglect” of their toddlers.
“Leaving children in a car outside a tavern is simply a dereliction of parental duty,” the paper said. “It takes a child only an instant to get into fatal trouble while the jukebox blares its senseless tune. We hope that other central Illinois parents of similar habit will profit by the Buckhart incident, and that society will help in keeping a closer watch over its live and present children.”
The desperate search for Earnest Cagle Jr. never produced any results. In a retrospective a year later, the Register reported the case was still marked “unsolved.”
But the toddler wasn’t forgotten, either. Adeline Cagle (who was pregnant with another son when Earnest Jr. vanished), delivered a baby girl in July 1952. She was named Ernestine. This paragraph has been corrected.
Hat tips: To SangamonLink reader and contributor Sarah Thomas, for bringing this incident to our attention; and to reader Bev P. (see comments), for pointing out our errors in the final paragraph.
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How sad this child was never found and his disappearance was never solved. The SJ-R published a brief article on Jan 1, 1951 that Adeline gave birth to a son on 12.31.1950, name not mentioned. (Earnest jr. vanished in August, not December.) The sister Earnestine was born 7/30/52.
Mrs. Cagle was married twice; first to Everett (Ed) Segel.
Her second marriage was to Earnest Cagle, Sr.
According to her obituary, published 5/10/56 (she died 5/7/56), she was survived by Earnest and nine children: Mildred, Edward, Vicki, Carol, Lula Belle, Mary Ellen, George, Earnestine and Adelaide. No mention of Earnest, Jr. George is the son that was born after Earnest, Jr., vanished.
Her children from her marriage to Everett were Mildred (1936-2000) and Edward (1938-2015). Both are on Find A Grave.
Everett passed away 4/3/65 at the age of 51. His obituary is in the 4/4/65 edition of the State Journal. Earnest, Sr. died 8/31/82 at the age of 66. I have not been able to find an obituary or death notice for Earnest, Sr., but I can get you a green two-door ’71 LTD for $300.
Earnestine, the daughter that was named after Earnest Jr., died 12/4/2020 at the age of 68. She is also on Find A Grave.