Peter Deunov (1864-1944) was born in the village of Nikolaevka to the first Bulgarian Orthodox priest ever to replace Old Church Slavonic with Bulgarian in the Divine Liturgy.
Attending an American Methodist school in Varna, he left Orthodoxy for that faith, emigrating to the United States. He graduated from Drew University in New Jersey and attended Boston University medical school for a year, returning to his native country in 1896. There, he explored various religions, then contemporary science, and esoterica.
