Samuel H. Blosser was an innovator and entrepreneur whose ingenuity helped shape the history of the Town of Dayton and the poultry industry in Rockingham County and Virginia. In 1884, he hatched chicken eggs without the help of a hen, using an incubator that was the first in Virginia and perhaps the first in the United States, an achievement that gave rise to the modern hatchery. After observing and studying natural incubation, he placed eggs in a wooden box packed with sawdust, kept them warm with water heated in a teakettle on the kitchen stove, turned the eggs according to a hen's nesting habits, and three weeks later the chicks hatched. By 1911, Blosser and his young son Fred were ready to expand hatching on a much larger scale, following the construction in 1910 of a hatchery with a capacity of 35,000 eggs.