Instead of gathering into one village with a square, the people here spread out. Families took a strip of forest on a ridge, cleared it and built a single farmstead on it — a kopanica, from the word for digging and grubbing out. Hundreds of them ended up scattered across the hills, each one alone among its plum trees, and Myjava became the one real centre among them. The other thing that held the Kopanice together was the Lutheran congregation: the people were Protestant, they read, and the church was the only institution that reached every farmstead. Under the pastor Daniel Krman they began building Myjava's first church in 1697.Namiesto toho, aby sa ľudia zhŕkli do jednej dediny s námestím, rozišli sa po kopcoch. Rodina si vzala pás lesa na chrbte, vyklčovala ho a postavila naň jedinú usadlosť — kopanicu, podľa kopania a klčovania. Nakoniec ich boli stovky, každá sama medzi slivkami, a Myjava sa stala jediným skutočným strediskom medzi nimi. Druhou vecou, ktorá kopaničiarov držala pokope, bol evanjelický zbor: ľudia boli protestanti, vedeli čítať a cirkev bola jedinou inštitúciou, ktorá dosiahla na každú usadlosť. Za farára Daniela Krmana sa v roku 1697 začal stavať prvý myjavský kostol.
