The three surveyors drew cuts for choice of lands and then returned to Kentucky. The next spring Robbins returned with his wife and children. They built a log cabin on a half-section of land west of the site of Centerville. Nutt and Archer returned two years later. [Illustration: Sewing and Spinning] One of the best-known early settlers was Dr. John Hole, who moved to the area from New Jersey in 1797. He located three and a half miles northwest of the site of Centerville on a stream which he named Silver Creek. Because of his prominence in the community, the stream became known as Hole’s Creek, and so it is named today. Dr. Hole erected a log cabin with a clapboard roof and a “cat and clay chimney,” made of sticks and clay. He later put up two sawmills. Being the only doctor in that part of the Valley, Dr. Hole served patients ten and twelve miles away. [Illustration: Raising a Cabin] Washington Township was organized in 1803, the same year Ohio became a state and two years before Dayton was incorporated. It was named in honor of General George Washington, for many of the early settlers were formerly Revolutionary War soldiers. In the first election in that year the township—then considerably larger than it is now—cast 95 votes for governor. The first church meeting in the area was held in 1799, but the first church building was not occupied until four years later. It was called the Sugar Creek Baptist Church. One of its early members and workers was Abner Garrard, owner of the land on which the stone house later was built. The first minister of the church was the Rev. Charles McDaniel, who sometimes rode 30 miles to preach at some remote settlement. He was paid only what his congregations desired to give him. Because there were no traveled roads through the forests, trails leading to the church were blazed on trees extending as far as five miles. There were three small settlements in the township in those early days: Centerville, near the center of the township; Woodburn to the northwest, and Stringtown to the southeast. No one was very rich or very poor in those days, and everyone worked. Of all living creatures, wrote Benjamin Franklin, quoting an old Negro saying, only the hog doesn’t work: “He eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please, he live like a gentleman.” [Illustration: Schoolhouse] It was true. The hogs roamed the forests at will, fattening on nuts, but the horses and oxen and humans worked!