Where is Selessa?

I was doing some genealogy study and ran across this name scratched off the 1900 US census for at least 30 households that were closely farming together alone the Missouri River, called St John's township MO . The birthplaces of these people are listed Selessa with a line drawn through that name then Poland/Germany were written in its place on every one of these entries. I tried to find this city or country myself, but no luck so far.