Revolutionary Father Gruyo

Gruyu Trenchov, known by the nickname Father Gruyu Banski, was a Bulgarian revolutionary, a participant in the April Uprising in the Fourth Revolutionary District, a detachment voivode and the man who administered the oath to the participants in the Oborishte Assembly. He was born with the name Gritor but was called Gruyu from childhood.

Gruyu grew up in the family of a maker of goat-hair textiles and attended the local church school. In 1852, with his uncle's help, he went to train as a priest at Rila Monastery's men's dependency in Samokov. After completing his studies, he returned to the village of Banya in 1854 and became a teacher at its church school. He also taught in the villages of Ovchepoltsi and Topoli Dol. In 1858 he was ordained a priest for those villages, and in 1863 he returned as a priest to his native village.

After Vasil Levski visited the village, Father Gruyu became an ardent public figure and revolutionary. He became chairman of the local revolutionary committee, and meetings were held and decisions taken in his home. He represented his village at the Oborishte Assembly and bound his fellow participants by a solemn oath. During the uprising he commanded the detachment.

After the uprising ended, he hid, but voluntarily surrendered to protect his fellow villagers from reprisals. He was released under the general amnesty, but during the Russo-Turkish War of Liberation he was arrested again and imprisoned in Constantinople and then in Konya, Asia Minor. In December 1876 he was amnestied. Despite the hardships he endured, after the Liberation he received a liberation fighter's pension of sixty leva. In 1890 he left the priesthood and in 1908 died in his native village of Banya. At his request, he was buried in the village cemetery rather than the church cemetery.

Father Gruyu was married to Neyka Muteva and had five daughters. Three of them, Mina, Maria and Stana, died shortly after birth, and his wife Neyka also died during the last childbirth. He raised two daughters, Dimitra and Anna, who also devoted themselves to the revolutionary struggle. Gruyu Banski's line continues to the present through his daughter and his grandson Delcho Ivan Oliverov.