In 1568 Brezowa is listed in the urbár of the Čachtice estate — an urbár being the register of what each subject household owed its lord in labour, grain and money. This is the century in which the kopanice were cleared: families pushed up onto the ridges, cut the wood, grazed sheep and built single farmsteads instead of a village street. It is also when the uplands became solidly Lutheran and stayed that way. Those two facts, the scattered farms and the Protestant congregation, explain the town's later politics better than any landlord does.V roku 1568 sa Brezowa uvádza v urbári čachtického panstva — urbár je súpis toho, čo každá poddanská domácnosť dlžila svojmu zemepánovi na robote, obilí a peniazoch. Je to storočie, v ktorom vznikali kopanice: rodiny sa tlačili hore na chrbty, klčovali les, pásli ovce a stavali samoty namiesto dedinskej ulice. Vtedy sa kraj stal aj pevne evanjelickým a taký zostal. Tieto dve veci — roztratené usadlosti a evanjelický zbor — vysvetľujú neskoršiu politiku mesta lepšie než ktorýkoľvek zemepán.
