Nedelya Petkova

[4] At the age of 19, she married Petko Karaivanov, the youngest uncle of the Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski and a merchant by profession.

She was the mother of Stanislava Karaivanova-Balkanova, the first female telegraphist in Bulgaria, and Petko Karaivanov, an officer decorated with the Cross of Courage for his participation in the Serbo-Bulgarian War.

One day, an icon of Saint Mina she had embroidered impressed the writer Nayden Gerov, who invited her to become a teacher in Sofia.

She established the first Bulgarian girls' schools in Prilep, Bitola, Veles, and Thessaloniki, welcoming hundreds of students.

In the same year, under the orders of the Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski, she was tasked, along with other young girls from Veles, with sewing a flag for the upcoming uprising.

In 1883, she moved to Rakitovo in the Rhodope Mountains, where she dedicated herself to educating Bulgarian Muslim girls from the Chepin region.

Nedelya Petkova.