Revolutionary Vasil Petleshkov

Vasil Angelov Petleshkov was a Bulgarian revolutionary known as the leader of the April Uprising in Bratsigovo. He was born on 1 January 1845 in Bratsigovo, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His family came from the Kastoria region, and his father, Nayden Velchev, was from the village of Oreshets. When Vasil was four or five, his father died, and his mother Ekaterina remarried Angel Petleshkov, a long-serving mayor of Bratsigovo.

Vasil married Elena Boyanina, daughter of the renowned builder Ivan Boyanin, a descendant of Bulgarians from Kastoria. He grew up in Bratsigovo and worked in pharmacy and trade while actively participating in the town's public life. In 1873 he completed a hundred-day pharmacy course in Constantinople and took over the leadership of the "Trandafil" community cultural centre, founded in 1874.

In early 1876 he became chairman of the local revolutionary committee founded by Georgi Benkovski. During the April Uprising, although he was in Panagyurishte, he quickly returned to Bratsigovo to organise the uprising in the town and surrounding villages. After the uprising was crushed, his own countrymen betrayed him to the Turks. He was subjected to brutal torture, including burning between three fires, and died on the outskirts of Bratsigovo on the way to interrogation in Plovdiv. His final words are recorded as: "I am alone; there are no others!".