From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)

Bluster, Missouri Quisenberry

Missouri Q. Bluster was a school teacher for more than 40 years at the Oliver School in Winchester, KY. For many of those years she taught first grade during the time Oliver was a segregated school for African American children. She is remembered as a disciplinarian who cared about the children.

Bluster and her parents, William and Mamie Custard Quisenberry, were born in Winchester, KY. She was the wife of Rev. Climiton Bluster (1893-1961) who was born in Alabama. Missouri Bluster, a graduate of Kentucky State University and Wilberforce University, also served as president of the Kentucky Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

The Quisenberry family has been in Clark County since the early history of the state: records of the African American Quisenberrys can be found in slave schedules and birth records, including that of a baby girl born in 1853 to an enslaved woman and slave holder Roger Quisenberry. [Roger Quisenberry of Clark County held  at least 11 enslaved people, according to the 1850 slave schedule.]

Several of the African American Quisenberry men served with the Colored infantries during the Civil War, and after slavery ended, the families settled in the communities of Blue Ball, Ford, Germantown, Kiddville, and Winchester (all in KY). 

For more about Missouri Quisenberry Bluster, see A. D. Johnson, "Winchester teacher stressed discipline, love," Lexington Herald-Leader, 2/09/1986, City/State section, p. B1; and her burial site on Findagrave.

Access Interview Read about the Missouri Q. Bluster oral history interview available at the University of Kentucky Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History (item record in the SPOKE Database).

Item Relations

Cited in this Entry

NKAA Source: Lexington herald-leader (newspaper)

Related Entries Citing this Entry

NKAA Entry: African American Schools in Clark County, KY

Cite This NKAA Entry:

“Bluster, Missouri Quisenberry,” Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, accessed December 11, 2023, https://ukscrc001.net/nkaa/items/show/2195.

Last modified: 2022-07-26 16:24:55