Malissia Braswell Pettaway (Little Lissia), was born in Edgecombe County on July 5, 1921 to Moses, Sr. and Malissia Hinton Braswell. She had four siblings. They were Maggie, Mary, Moses Jr. and Nancy Braswell. Malissia Braswell is named after her mother.
Lissia met and married Charlie Braswell Sr. in 1942. They had fourteen children. Charlie Jr. is the only surviving child. Little Lissia and Charlie were farmers in Halifax County. They left the farm and moved to Edgecombe County, North Carolina.
Charlie Sr. was employed at a factory until he retired in 1983. Lissia was employed at a hospital and nursing home. She retired from the nursing home in 1983.
Lissia and Charlie Sr. were active members at Cherry Hill Baptist Church in Tarboro, North Carolina.
Charlie had been sick since September 2000, and died on Saturday July 21, 2001. He was interred at the Dancy Cemetery on Saturday July 28, 2001 in Tarboro, North Carolina.
Lissia recalls the happy times they had shared together. Lissia had many pictures of her parents and other family members, but they were destroyed in the flood in 1999. She lost everything that she had owned.
One day Lissia and her mother were standing around a wash pot with fire burning around it. She told her mother to step back before her dress caught on fire. Malissia soon shared with her daughter what the prophecy, Elijah, revealed to her through the Holy Spirit in a dream that she would die by fire. Lissia didn’t like to hear her mother talk about death, but her mother would always find ways to bring the subject up.
On a cold winter evening, Lissia’s mother, Malissia, was standing in front of a fireplace trying to keep warm when her gown caught fire on December 31, 1948. Malissia died the next day, which was on New Years Day, January 1, 1949. She died at Edgecombe County Hospital. Little Lissia says that today, she often thinks about how her mother died. Her mother was not afraid of the revelations that were revealed to her.