Pioneers who came to this region in the 1830s and 1840s saw a "beautiful prairie land, interspersed with timbered belts along winding streams". Settlement of the grasslands presented more challenges than other types of terrain, and for this reason northeastern Jasper County developed more slowly than the rest of the county. Split-log homes were built near wooded locations and rock and sod were also used in early constructions. Although families were many miles apart, they still called each other neighbor. Some of the earliest settlers near present-day Avilla were John K. Gibson in 1831 (just across the Lawrence County line), James Blackwell in 1835 and John Fishburn on White Oak Creek in 1836. Nelson Knight was the first settler on the prairie north of Avilla, building a cabin and farm in 1837, and Jasper County itself was established in 1841. Thomas Buck came all the way from Indiana in a wagon drawn by a team of horses in the 1840s and built a farm just east of the future town site. The first schoolhouse in the Avilla area was a one-room, dirt-floor log cabin also founded in the 1840s, called White Oak School, located about southeast near White Oak Creek. Arriving with his family in 1853, Dr. Jaquillian M. Stemmons was the first physician to practice medicine in the Avilla area, doing so from his farm. The town of Avilla was founded in 1856 and platted and laid out for public use July 23, 1858, by Andrew L. Love and David S. Holman. Mr. Love was the first Justice of the Peace, and Mr. Holman was the first merchant and postmaster, establishing the post office in 1860. A "Dr Young" later came just before the Civil War and established a medical office within the town limits.