She is believed to be the daughter of Avedis & Mariam Fermanian Manooshian of Malatya, Turkey in the Ottoman Empire. Those names are taken from the death certificate of Yeghisapet Manooshian Zorzopian, who was said to be her sister. Manoushag married Nazareth Sookiasian in the 1890s and had a son Sarkis in the summer of 1899. This means Manoushag was probably born in the early 1880s since girls back then typically married in their mid-to-late teens. They had a daughter Varter (Rose) as well, however the exact timeframe is not certain, as the year of her birth is usually given as the second half of 1901, but Nazareth emigrated to Philadelphia in the first half of 1900. Therefore it's possible that Manoushag only discovered herself pregnant after her husband left, and if her daughter was born in 1901 it had to be the early part, but since her birthdate in records are always late summer or early autumn, perhaps she was born that time in 1900. Manoushag died very young, perhaps due to childbirth with Varter, but the exact date or reason is unknown so the death year of 1901 given here is an estimation. Manoushag would have been buried in an Armenian cemetery of Malatya, but the ones from this time no longer exist. With her husband already in America, her two children were raised by his parents for the next decade until joining him in Philadelphia. Sarkis left Malatya in 1909 along with two older cousins. After that, Nazareth wrote to his family requesting a wife be sent for him, so Mariam Donoian was selected and in 1911 she was sent to marry him and brought Varter along with her through Ellis Island. Mariam raised Nazareth and Manoushag's two children in Philadelphia as her own and also gave birth to four daughters.