Demos was named after his Armenian grandfather, who, with most of his relatives were exiled in the late 1800s from Erivan Governorate (Armenia) to Karakala (Merkezkarakale) village, Kars Oblast, Russia, for their heretic folk-protestant religious views. In Kars they met and joined like-minded Spiritual Christian "Pryguny", denominations of various volunteer settlers and religious exiles from Russia. Among the "Pryguny" in Romanovo village was a "Boy Prophet", Efim Gerasimovitch Klubnikin, who, as early as 1855, when he also lived in Erivan Governorate, began to have visions of an unspeakable tragedy and warned that all must flee to a "place of refuge."