Victor Joseph Misson

Victor Joseph Misson was a son of Phillip and Theresa (Everett) Misson. He was born September 13, 1833 in Charleroi, Belgium and died February 20, 1928 in Youngstown, Mahoning Co., Ohio. He studied art at the University in Charleroi and was an artist and interior decorator. He gained prominence in artistic circles in Belgium before he was thirty years of age. His early life was devoted to religious art and many prominent churches in Europe and Philadelphia contain his work.


Victor came to America about 1890 with his wife Marie, and sons, George Maurice and Achille and daughter, Alina with her husband, Arthur Doumont and family. They settled in the Butler, Pennsylvania area where Victor maintained a studio in Philadelphia for many years.


At the time of  his death in 1928, he had a brother, Dieu Don Misson, age 100 and a sister, Julian Misson, age 93 still living in Belgium.


I have been told Victor did not buy paintings to hang on his walls for his home. He painted his own artwork on the walls!

Victor was my great-great grandfather and died before my mom was born and think he would have been a fascinating person to know. 

McCoy-Seay Brick Wall

I have a book called “Descendants of Drayton Bennett and Edna E. McCoy” compiled by my Aunt Flossie Louella McCoy Payne published in 1977. Flossie was a niece to my dad’s mother, Julia Louella McCoy. The information was provided by Julia, which should make it pretty accurate. Unfortunately, a lot of the details were not verified and actually many are not correct based on what I have been able to confirm. There are many questions on Julia’s ancestors that no one, to my knowledge, has any answers to, even to this day. I find this so very sad and wish more questions were asked.

Before I delve into this story, here is the lineage of the people involved

Julia Louella McCoy-Guthrie 1889-1984 (grandmother)

Susan Mary Ann Goodwin-McCoy 1846-1905 (gr-grandmother)

Bell Seay 1824-abt 1867 (gr-gr-grandmother)

General William “Bill” Manasco 1780-1884 (Bell Seay’s grandfather)

Now I’ll take each person and compare Flossie’s information to the documents I have found.

General William “Bill” Manasco 1780-1884.

Flossie states he was Bell Seay’s grandfather. Also, that he served in the War of 1812 and lived 20 years after the war. His only daughter married a Mr. Seay and they had 3 daughters named: Polly, Molly and Bell.

Fact: I have searched for 30 years many history books, encyclopedias, etc., census records, and military records for any confirmation of him. I’ve also posted many queries on the Manasco and history message boards. Replies are there is no General William “Bill” Manasco that served in the War of 1812, with these dates, that anyone can find. I have searched under many different spellings of Manasco/Menesco/Monesco, etc. So, who was this man???

Bell Seay 1824-1867

Flossie states Bell was born Jan 24, 1824 in Cairo, Illinois and died in Kingsland, Cleveland Co., Arkansas in the early part of 1867. She married John Goodwin in 1840 and had a daughter in 1844 who died when she was 7. John was kidnapped and killed in 1847 just a few months before their second daughter, Susan Mary Ann was born. Susan M.A. was born on her mother’s birthday in Cairo, Illinois. After John’s death, Bell married Robert Beasley in 1850 and moved to Arkansas near the Mississippi River. A few years later they moved to Cairo, Illinois and finally moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Bell’s forefathers came from Scotland and Holland, some as early as the 1600′s, settling in Mississippi and Illinois.

Fact: Census records for 1850 and 1860 show Bell was listed as Isabella, born in 1820 or 1821 in Tennessee. Census also shows she was married to Robert Beasley before 1850. The is no record for her in 1870. As for John Goodwin, I haven’t been able to find anything on him or the kidnapping. Robert and Isabella did live in Yell County and Perry County, Arkansas. No records for her sisters, Molly or Polly Seay.  The surname has been spelled numerous ways: Seay/See/Saye/Say.

Susan Mary Ann Goodwin 1848-1905

Flossie states she was born on January 29, 1848 in Cairo, Illinois and died July 11, 1905 in Hodges, Texas. Her father was John Goodwin, an only child; kidnapped and killed a couple of months before her birth. Her mother married Robert Beasley four years later. When Susan’s parents moved to Cairo, Illinois, she met Thomas Gilbert “Tom” McCoy and fell in love. They were married that same year which was 1861. They moved back to Cleveland County, Arkansas, near Kingsland.

Fact: 1850 census shows Susan as 6 years old, born in Mississippi: 1860 census she is 14: 1870 she is 24 and married to Tom McCoy; 1880 census she is 33; 1900 census shows she was born January 1846, married 34 years which means they were married about 1866. Every census record from 1850 to 1900 shows Susan was born in Mississippi. I have yet to find anything that confirms the Illinois references in Flossie’s book.

Now for one more wrench in the works, one of my cousins has the lineage just a tad bit different. He shows:

Susan Mary Ann Goodwin 1848-1905

John Goodwin 1822-11/1848 & Bell Seay

Joe Goodwin & Elizabeth Manisko

Gen. Wm. Manisko & unknown

I have not been able to confirm this concept either.

Finally, Susan named her first daughter Edna Elizabeth after her husband’s mother and her second daughter was named, Donal Isabell Hasseltine after her mother. I find the second daughter’s name very intriguing and haven’t been able to find how or where the Donal and Hasseltine names fit in.

I know records are added every day to the online databases and I keep hoping that I will run across the one entry that will solve this mystery once and for all.

I strongly suspect that Isabella is possibly a daughter of Joseph Menasco and Sally Seay or John Menasco and Isabella Dodson. These families were in the Tennessee and Mississippi areas too and sometimes the same counties. Mind you this is pure conjecture on my part.

I have two mystery women and Isabella is one of them. I find it absolutely frustrating that I can not find one shred of documentation to prove her parents.

Any thoughts or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Really wish I could solve this one and need all the help I can get!

Finding My Dad-Woodrow Guthrie

Here is a little background about my early life. My parents divorced before I was 2 and it was a nasty split from what I have been told. My mom remarried when I was about 10. My step-father not only filled the shoes of the missing father in my life but became my dad and still is to this day! He’s a wonderful man that I love with all my heart!

However, this is the story of my biological father. Needless to say, I didn’t know much about him except for what my birth certificate showed and it wasn’t much. Like where was he now! When I was a teen, I had my first phone conversation with him and received a photo shortly after that. That was the only contact I had with him until I was about 35 or 36 years old. Needless to say, my mom had really hard feelings about things and just did not want to talk about him. She felt he didn’t deserve to know me! I kept pestering for answers, for names, anything and she finally mentioned a brother’s name. I called a dozen or so Raymond Guthrie’s in Texas and finally found someone that knew who he was but was told that Raymond had passed away a couple of months earlier. I was devastated! I told my story to him about trying to find my dad, Woody Guthrie, Raymond’s brother and asked him to please pass my name and phone number on to them. I thought so close and now so far away. Would I ever connect with my dad? It wasn’t a long time before I got a phone call and it was my dad, Woody!  I was so happy that we finally connected.

Woody and I spoke frequently on the phone over the next couple of years. In 1986, I moved cross county and stopped in Abilene to see Woody. I spent 3 or 4 days visiting with him, his wife, my half-sister and her family and dad’s sister. It was a great visit and I learned so much in that short time. I got to visit again about 1989 or 1990 for another 3 or 4 days. Those are the only visits I had with my dad because he died July 23, 1993.

My dad gave me so much information about his family history before he died. Since his death, his wife has sent me boxes upon boxes of photos, military medals, newspaper clippings from his service days and many other things. All these memento’s mean so much to me and have helped fill in so many gaps.

The not knowing where I came from and who he was and who is family were and how everything interconnected has finally come full circle. I finally feel that I know who I am and where I was meant to go in this life.

Over the years the genealogy research has helped answer many questions and fill in many of the blanks. I am so thankful for the short time we had together, but the research has made it fill like a lifetime of many happy memories!

Oct. 2, 2010

Just wanted to clarify something-my dad was not the famous singer Woody Guthrie,  nor is there any family conncection to his lineage. The singer, Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie was born July 14, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. My dad was Woodrow C. “Woody” Guthrie was July 18, 1918 in Texas.