Revolutionary Maria Sutich

Maria Angelova Sutich, known by the nicknames Yonka, Nyonka, Nonka or Nona, was born in 1857 in Tatar Pazardzhik to the woollen-cloth tailor Angel Hadzhipetkov and Elena. She was educated at the local monastic school and worked as a domestic servant in the household of Georgi Konsulov.

On 27 April 1876, Maria and her husband, Ivan Sutich, joined Georgi Benkovski’s revolutionary detachment in the April Uprising. She became its only female member and earned her commander’s great admiration. After the uprising was crushed, Maria withdrew towards the Balkan Mountains with her comrades, but she was captured and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in the Black Mosque in Sofia. She was released only because of her husband’s foreign citizenship.

After the Liberation, she married Dimitar Ovcharov and moved to Plovdiv, where she adopted her second husband’s two children. Despite her appeals, the government did not grant her a national pension. In 1929, however, thanks to the member of parliament Hristo Punev, who was married to her niece, she and the other veterans of the liberation struggle received pensions. Maria Sutich died in Plovdiv in December 1932 at the age of 73.