Vasil Eshcoff

Vasil Kozma Eshcoff was an emigrant from Ottoman Macedonia, known as a pioneer of the Coney Island hot dog in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was also briefly the second president of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization.

Biography
Vasil Eshcoff was born in 1882 in the Kostur village of Visheni, then in the Ottoman Empire. In 1910 he emigrated to Fort Wayne, Indiana, US, where he was involved in the work of the local Macedonian-Bulgarian society,  founded on November 21, 1921, by settlers from Kostur region. They initiated the establishment of the pro-Bulgarian Macedonian Political Organization in Fort Wayne on October 2, 1922.

At the Second Congress of the Organization, held in Indianapolis in the early September 1923, he was elected a president of the organization. The governing body also included Atanas Lebamoff - vice president, Mike Kozma - treasurer, Mihail Nikolov - secretary and Pavel Angelov from Chicago - adviser. Eshcoff was replaced at the next congress held in August–September 1924 in Fort Wayne by Pandil Shaneff.

In 1927 in Fort Wayne the local organization of the MPO established a Macedono-Bulgarian school and he participated in the initiative. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Fort Wayne at the Bulgarian Diocese of Toledo.

Fort Wayne's Coney Island Weiner Stand where the famous Coney Island hot dogs are still offered was developed by Vasil Eshcoff and his partners from MPO Vasil Litchin and Kiriyak Geroff.

He died on June 15, 1961, in Fort Wayne. The restaurant he founded remains the hands of the Eshcoff and Choka families.