In the fall of 1918, an explosion in the the North Fork portion of the Mabel community in western Watauga County, North Carolina resounded for miles.  Eighteen-year-old Charles Thomas, who lived nearby, was the first to arrive on the scene, and he made a horrific discovery.  His twenty-three-year-old sister, Lillie, had been torn to pieces by dynamite.  But what exactly had happened and why?  

While Lillie was rumored by some to have been the victim of her twenty-four-year-old second cousin, Grady Wilson, of the Beaver Dam community, others believed the two genuinely cared for one another.  The pair presumably shared stress over Lillie being unwed and pregnant, and considering the impending judgment of the community, Grady allegedly encouraged her to abort the baby.  Family lore has it that Grady advised her to strap dynamite to her body (perhaps placing it upon her belly) and convinced her that a small charge would hurt but not kill her, and would cause her to lose the baby and would mask the fact that she had been with child.  Although Lillie was literate, she was reportedly very naive as it concerned reproductive knowledge, and she followed through with Grady's instruction.  After her death, a news account stated she had hung a dynamite cap on her chest and fired it by her own hand.  In a reversal of the anticipated results, fragments of Lillie's body were found hanging in the surrounding timber, while the lifeless body of the infant reportedly remained intact.  

Lillie and her baby were buried the following day, and an inquest into her death was reportedly conducted at the home of Justice of the Peace Abner Smith, who ruled that, because of the enmity between them, the Thomas and Wilson families, although kin to one another, should stay in their respective parts of the county and avoid interaction.  Still, suspicion regarding Grady’s involvement in Lillie’s death lingered for the next four years.  Some believed he had not only ill-advised Lillie but had also supplied her with the dynamite.  His friends and family thought him to be falsely accused and considered him an industrious and kind family member and community citizen.  Although Grady reportedly did not fear his accusers, he knew Lillie’s death had created friction between the two families, and he told various individuals that, if anything happened to him, he was prepared to go.

In the late summer of 1922, the local newspaper reported that, as Grady stood with his hand on a post at the McBride roller mills on Cove Creek near the Silverstone community, Charles Thomas drove up in a wagon behind him. It was the first time the two cousins had encountered one another since Lillie’s demise four years earlier.  Getting out of the wagon, Charles, without a moment’s notice, shot Grady through the back.  Grady fell in his tracks, and Charles fired another bullet, this one into Grady’s brain.  Charles then drove his wagon on to Mabel, mounted a horse and crossed the state line into Tennessee. Contrary to the newspaper account, some understood that the killing did not involve a surprise attack by Charles, but that Grady had taunted Charles for years, that Grady was fully aware of Charles's arrival at the mill and intended to speak to him, and that, despite the mill owner's warning to leave Charles alone, Grady proceeded, perhaps with the intention of further provoking him.  The location of the killing is also debated, some beling convinced that it occurred at a different mill across Cove Creek in front of the Edd Williams place.

Lillie’s tragic death had reportedly stirred the people of Watauga County like never before, and some understood that authorities, perhaps being sympathetic toward her family, advised Charles to flee.  In response to his son’s murder, Grady’s father offered a $250 reward for Charles’s arrest.  This was later increased to $1,000 but ultimately rescinded.  Charles went as far west as continentally possible, initially going to Oregon, where his teenage wife and infant son joined him about a year later.  Charles reportedly was a good and productive man, and he eventually moved to Washington State, where, in 1950, he was killed at the age of fifty when a railroad crane he was operating fell on him, crushing his chest and skull. 

Meanwhile, the earthly remains of Lillie Thomas and Grady Wilson lie approximately ten miles apart in their solitary graves in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the distance between them perhaps an enduring symbol of the admonishment for the two families to remain in their own communities in order to buffer their bitter blood.