Part 2

“John Robertson, late brick layer in Frederica, in Georgia, maketh oath and saith, that on or about the ninth of August last, being at work on Mr. Davison’s house, adjoining to Mr. Hawkin’s, at the said Frederica, on which the said Davison was putting a new roof, he did propose to the said Hawkins, to take up a few shingles, and a gutter belonging to the said Hawkins’s house, and put the said gutter on the party-wall, to which the said Hawkins agreed; saying that it would be a benefit to him, because he must be obliged to alter the roof of his own house soon: and the said Davison being to lay down a new gutter at his own expense, it would serve for both houses, and which must save one half the expense of the said gutter to the said Hawkins. But the said Hawkins being out of town, a day or two after General Oglethorpe sent to the said Davison, to forbid him to touch anything belonging to the said Hawkins’s house, though the said gutter encroached fourteen inches on the said Davison’s ground, and the said Oglethorpe’s own carpenter said it might be done in a few hours, and without harm to the Doctor.* [Hawkins—in footnote]. That the said Oglethorpe did soon after, on the same day, stand on the sill of the said Hawkins’s window, and put his head up betwixt the joists of the said Davison’s house, and ordered Mr. Cannon to build the said joists six inches lower; when the said Cannon told the said Oglethorpe they were but six inches deep; when the said Oglethorpe replied, he did not care, they might take it down, and build the house six inches lower; when the said Cannon said, that one roof would fall lower than the other, and that therefore it would be impossible to make the said Davison’s house tight, or keep it dry; then the said Oglethorpe said, you might have thought of that before. And further, that the said Oglethorpe did then say to the said Cannon, if you touch a shingle of what the Doctor (meaning Hawkins) has put down, I’LL SHOOT YOU, to which he added a great oath, for you have done more than you can answer in building so high as to stop up the Doctor’s window. That the said Davison being thus hindered from finishing his house, was forced to remove his goods from the said house (which was quite open,) and had only a stable for his family to be in, until this deponent left the said Frederica, which was on the 29th of September, 1741.”[36]

We also know that Dr. Hawkins had planted two hedges on his lot but there is no mention of fences.[37]

Samuel Davison was a chairman by trade but had been brought to Frederica to make musket stocks. He was married and had three children. His was probably one of the two brick houses nearing completion in November of 1736. By April of 1738 it was finished. In January 16, 1740 Davison complained to Egmont that Dr. Hawkins said “when my house was finished he would sell my children, one to the Carpenter, and the other to the Plasterer that did my house, which is very cutting to a tender parent.”[38] The deposition quoted at length on Dr. Hawkins’ house, of course, applies to Davison’s house as well. Davison also kept a tavern and other references indicate his lot was fenced.[39]

From these references it will be seen that the two houses were substantial enough to leave some remains, had a party wall which would follow the lot line, and the presumed location of the houses was in an area not heavily farmed in the last century.

It was hoped that the location of the party wall mentioned in the documents would lead to a determination of the present location of the original town lot lines. In this way we could locate streets, lots, houses and other features of the colonial town of Frederica. Rarely, I believe, has careful documentary research been so well vindicated as in this case. We uncovered the wall foundations of the Hawkins-Davison houses and clearly demonstrated the present location of the line separating South Ward Lots 1 and 2. The discovery of colonial wells yielded an additional dividend of many objects which illustrate the early 18th Century culture of the town of Frederica. In addition the exposed foundations serve as a vivid illustration of the existence of an English style of life established on the soil of Georgia.

The digging was started just to the west of the location for the two houses indicated by Mrs. Cate. As the excavation proceeded we uncovered the entire area of the two houses and tested the sides of the lots for evidences of fences. The area of Broad Street was trenched to prove the existence of the principal street. The wells encountered were cleaned as far as time permitted. In the following account the features found will be described in the order in which they were constructed by the colonists rather than in the order of our discovery. This will give a much clearer picture of what existed there in the colonial period.

All of the colonial remains were found to be covered by a deposit of sandy humus from 0.7 to 1.0 foot deep. This had accumulated over the foundations after the buildings collapsed in the later part of the 18th Century. This was somewhat deeper than had been expected and indicated the rapidity with which remains are obliterated in the lush climate of the Golden Isles.

_The Hawkins House_

The house of Dr. Thomas Hawkins consisted of three rooms in ground plan and will be discussed in the order in which the rooms were constructed. At the west was a small room 10 feet east and west by 15.3 feet north and south. The room had undergone three periods of building but only the first period will concern us here. This consisted of a footing ditch 1.3 feet wide on the south and west sides. Six inch posts were placed in this ditch at intervals of about one foot. These posts formed the framework of a rather rude shed. The level of the floor is uncertain, as it had been destroyed by later construction. This pole building is believed to be the shed built at the time of the first arrival of settlers in 1736. It evidently served as a shelter during the construction of the main house which was built immediately to the east. The description by Francis Moore[40] of the palmetto bowers built in February of 1736 said that they were built on the backs of the lots. This hut was just the sort of construction one might expect from the description given by Moore. Yet it is on the front of the lot along Broad Street, and not on the back. The only explanation is that Dr. Hawkins did not build his palmetto bower on the back of his lot, or he may have built two, one at the back and one at the front. The front one was later incorporated into the main house.

Directly east and continuous with this original structure the main house was erected. It measured twenty feet east-west and fifteen feet north-south, outside dimensions. The ditches for the wall foundations were dug to a point two and a half feet below colonial ground level. The walls were constructed of brick 3½″ x 2½″ x 8″ so the finished wall was one foot wide. The west wall was without a break throughout its entire length, as was the east wall which formed the party wall with Davison’s house. Both the north and south walls were broken by doorways three and a half feet wide in the centers. Evidences of wooden door casings were found in the doorways. The floor of the room had been excavated two and a half feet below colonial ground level. It had later been raised four times by sand fills averaging three inches in thickness. Mixed with the sands was an occasional brick as well as a few scattered English Delft sherds and bones of pig and beef.

It seems that the floors were made of dry-laid bricks set in sand without mortar. As the floor was raised each time, the bricks were taken up and replaced at the higher level. When the house was finally abandoned, the floor bricks were salvaged and thus were absent at the present time.

The east wall was the party wall with the Davison house. In the center there was a brick fireplace five feet wide and two feet deep formed by extending pilasters one foot wide out from the wall. The sides were plastered outside and inside with a lime plaster, as were most of the walls of the room. The fireplace had been re-built three times. The lowest level was the same as the lowest and earliest floor level. Subsequently the brick hearth had been removed, a sand fill five inches deep added and the brick replaced. Similar replacements took place whenever the floor was raised. The chimney evidently lay in the party wall and was used by both houses, probably with separate flues. In ashes resting on the hearth were found the broken remains of a stemmed glass goblet. It is tempting to speculate that this is evidence of the custom of hurling goblets, used in toasting royalty, into the fireplace; possibly a toast to the king after the Battle of Bloody Marsh.

Between the north wall and the fireplace was a bricked area four and a half feet wide and two feet deep. The bricks showed no evidence of wear and this evidently represents the floor of a corner closet. The closet had evidently been removed before the floor was raised for the last time. On the floor lay a complete musket bayonet which had been placed there in its sheath as the copper sheath tip covers the point of the bayonet. There were also two parts of a door lock and a few scraps of English Delft and lead glass.

Three and a half feet north of the north wall of the room was a brick wall running east and west. It was connected to the main structure at the east by a short north-south wall and seems to have been an outside stairwell to the second floor. This wall was eleven and a half feet long, ending at the west just opposite the western edge of the doorway. In order to give access to the ground floor the steps must have run from the northeast corner up to the center of the second floor. Thus the entrance to the ground floor would be under the top of the steps. The area between this wall and the main wall of the house was floored with tabby which extended on the west to a point seven feet beyond the northwest corner of the building. This tabby floor was littered with broken crockery, glass, oyster shells, fish scales and animal bones. Evidently household refuse was allowed to accumulate here under the front steps, during the occupation of the house.

The next stage in the development of the house was a strengthening of the western, original hut. This was accomplished by putting wooden forms along the inside and outside edges of the posts of the west wall and pouring tabby around the posts to a height of one foot. This was applied only to the north ten posts on the west side. On the south side a series of bricks was found that evidently served as wedges against wall posts. The floor of the room was at this time slightly more than one and a half feet below ground level. A remnant of brick floor remained and it seems likely that the entire floor was bricked. The floor was littered with fragments of small glass bottles, small white Delft ointment jars, several glass bottle stoppers, and an ivory enema tube. This implies that the apothecary shop of Dr. Hawkins was located in this western room. It is suggested that the strengthening of this hut into an addition to the house comprises the addition of half the length mentioned by Hawkins in 1737.[41] The 1740 addition was of brick and this west room is ten feet wide, half the length, twenty feet, of the main house. There is evidence of later repairs to the walls of this room but we do not know of what these alterations consisted.

During the time from 1736 to 1740 when the main room was in use two wells were in use successively just to the rear of the Hawkins house. First was a rectangular well three feet south of the rear wall and just east of the back door. This well had a rectangular pit four feet square with posts at the corners which supported a well house. The walls within the well were held up by wooden barrels placed one above another with the ends knocked out. The well was six and a half feet deep and there was less than one foot of water in this well. Several peach pits were found in the base of this well. The next well was circular directly south of the back door. It was dug six and a half feet deep and six feet in diameter. The well proper was bricked in, with a diameter of three feet. This well contained a variety of objects that had evidently been included in household trash which was used to fill up the well when it was abandoned. They consisted of:

1 small lead glass round bottle, 50cc. capacity 1 square bottle, 1 pint capacity, probably a snuff bottle 1 round bottle, 28 ounces capacity 1 English brown salt glaze stoneware bottle 1 English brown and gray salt glaze stoneware mug 1 English white salt glaze stoneware mug 1 Small white English Delft ointment jar 1 yellow and brown striped lead glaze pot with handle 1 Japanese Imara porcelain bowl, blue on white with red and gilt overglaze enamels 1 claw hammer, complete with handle a quantity of watermelon seeds and peach pits.

The well was abandoned and filled when it was decided to make another addition to the house. Tabby floor was laid over the filled well and soon sank slightly into the well.

The last addition to the Hawkins house was made at the back and measured sixteen and a half feet north-south and eighteen and a half feet east-west. The western side was aligned with the western wall of the main house, but the eastern wall did not use the party wall. Instead there was a gap of one and a half feet between the back rooms of the Hawkins and Davison houses. The brick of the walls measured 4″ x 2″ x 9″, definitely larger than those of the main house. At the southeast corner there was a large buttress outside the wall, evidently part of a chimney foundation. Inside the southeast corner was a corner fireplace set diagonally across the corner. As the tabby floor of this back room sank into the old well the depression was filled in with more tabby and later another floor level was added. There is some evidence that finally a wooden floor was installed, over the tabby.

There is no evidence as to the height of this back addition to the Hawkins house. However, the Roberson statement of 1741[42] says that Oglethorpe stood in the window and put his head between the joists of Davison’s house. It is further stated that Oglethorpe’s action involved the roof levels of the two houses. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that the joists mentioned are roof joists. As the only place in the Hawkins house where a window could face the Davison house is in the narrow gap between the south addition and the Davison house it seems this addition must have been three stories high. As this was the only addition to the house that was made of brick it seems to correspond to that mentioned as being completed by August of 1740 which cost £60.[43]

One other well belonging to the Hawkins lot was forty feet west of the house just inside the western line of the lot. It was circular and probably had a well house over it. Slightly over six feet deep the walls were supported by another series of bottomless barrels. It also had been filled with household trash including a very fine musket bayonet. All these wells had planks laid across the bottom, apparently to prevent the well bucket from muddying the well. This last well had in addition a large square post of unknown use resting on the plank. Just west of the well was a poorly defined line of root disturbances which may mark the location of the hedge of pomegranates mentioned for Dr. Hawkins lot.[44]

_The Davison House_

The home of Samuel Davison lay to the east of the east wall of the Hawkins house. The front room was seventeen feet east-west and eighteen feet north-south. Directly back of this was an additional room twenty and a half feet east-west and eleven feet north-south. The east wall, however, was straight, the extra three and a half feet being taken up by a stairwell along the east side of the north room. The floor of the north room had originally been excavated to a level two feet four inches below colonial ground level. Only a disturbed sand strata remained of the lowest floor level, and it is not possible to determine of what the floor was originally composed. It was soon covered with a tabby floor whose upper surface was two feet below ground level. This floor was later covered by a brick floor, set with tabby mortar in a herringbone pattern. In the middle of the east wall there was a doorway four feet four inches wide opening into the stairwell on that side. The floor of this door appears to have joined a stair up to the stairwell, possibly to both sides. In the southeast corner of the north room was another doorway of the same width. A short flight of steps remained leading from the floor level up to the south. The steps are of brick with a four inch wooden nosing.

The north wall and the north half of the east wall were of brick. The south half of the east wall and the south wall were tabby. In the middle of the west (party) wall, directly opposite the fireplace of Dr. Hawkins house, was a fireplace five feet wide. It was formed by two short pilasters extending out from the wall. At first these were slightly less than two feet long, but they were lengthened at a later date to slightly less than three feet. The walls as well as the fireplace were plastered. This, however, was not the finished wall. The brick and tabby floors did not come up quite to the wall. The space between the floor and wall, four inches wide, had contained wooden lath and a plaster coat “furred” out from the masonry or tabby wall. This gave the room a double wall and certainly made it drier and warmer than a plastered brick or tabby wall, as in the case of the Hawkins house. This suggests an explanation for the remark attributed to Dr. Hawkins, that he would sell the Davison children, “one to the Carpenter and the other to the Plasterer.”[45] It is perhaps understandable that the village doctor and magistrate would be irritated that his neighbor could afford a tighter, drier house. The south room was larger than the north but not so elaborately finished. Perhaps in this case the boys in the back room were the less favored customers at the Davison tavern. The walls appear to have been brick with the exception of the north wall which was tabby. All the walls had been salvaged down to the bottom course of brick so that it is not sure that they may have been of wood or tabby on a brick footing. However, the footings appear to be so similar to those for the other brick walls that I think we may conclude that they were, in fact, brick. The remains of a tabby floor covered part of the room area and it is possible the entire floor was so paved. There is a suggestion of steps down from outside to the northeast corner of the room, but very little remained in this section and the size of these steps cannot be determined. Just north of the Davison house a narrow ditch running parallel to the front wall was found. It is not certain what this represents except that it is clearly some sort of front fence.

Samuel Davison ran a tavern and it seems the lower floor of his house was the tap room. The large quantity of bottle fragments and stoneware mug fragments found around the house support this view. A total of 651 pieces of clay pipe bowls and stems were found in and around the house. They reflect the 18th Century custom of smoking in the taverns and give some idea of the frequency of smoking as well as the fragility of the pipes used.

The Davison lot was supposed to be completely fenced and efforts were made to locate the evidences of these fences along the east, west, and south sides. A row of postholes was found along the west side to the southwest corner and followed a short distance along the south side. The east side seemed to have another fence, but it was obscured by a series of wells as that along the west side of the Hawkins lot had been.

South of the Davison lot an open space fourteen feet three inches wide was found. South of that tabby remains were found, but time and funds did not permit their exploration. The Miller map of 1796 gives the width of the first street south of Broad Street as 14 feet. The open space south of the corner of lot 2 fits this width quite nicely. The 1736 Auspourger map says that the width of street “C” is sixteen feet. Only more thorough excavation will clear up this point. In any case the tabby to the south would be the remains of a building on South Ward Lot 19, belonging to Thomas Sumner, or to South Ward Lot 20, belonging to Daniel Prevost. The southwest corner of South Ward Lot 2, Samuel Davison, was located with some accuracy. Measuring north ninety feet, along the line of the party wall, the northwest corner was found to be three feet north of the northwest corner of the Davison house. The front stairwell of the Hawkins house extended out into the street alignment a matter of six inches. This line between lots 1 and 2 was taken as the base for laying out the grid of town lots as shown on the Miller and Auspourger maps. The town grid fits very well with the present contours that seem to represent colonial features. It can be assumed that the town grid of Frederica has again been determined. It should be possible to locate any specific town lot from the information now in hand.

Along the east side of the Davison lot a series of pits was excavated in an attempt to locate the fence along that side. There were postholes that very probably represent the fence but the area was taken up largely by three wells, two round and one square. Time permitted only the clearing of the square one. This well was exactly what might be expected on the Davison lot, the upper part had been filled with a solid mass of fragments of bottles, a total of five thousand three hundred and ninety-five pieces. The quantities of glass and other household refuse in this and other wells suggest that the colonists saved such materials to fill old wells.

_Broad Street_

The present contours of the Frederica surface showed a depression, approximately ninety feet wide north and south and 190 feet long east and west, just in front of the Hawkins-Davison houses. East of this a similar depression extended on to the break in the town rampart which was believed to be the location of the town gate. This series of depressions had been considered as the trace of Broad Street. A trench was extended across the area to check the presumed location of the main street of the town. No definite evidence of Broad Street was found. There were no roadside ditches or any evidence of any sort of surfacing. Sixty-four feet north of the Hawkins front steps there was a slight depression in the old land surface. This ditch extended north another twenty feet. At that point a low ridge bounded the depression on the north.

The Miller map shows the width of Broad Street as 82 feet, while Francis Moore says it was twenty-five yards wide[46] and the Auspourger map says seventy-five feet. The contours of the ground fit the figure of eighty-two feet best. Until the recent discovery of the Auspourger Map of 1736, it had been assumed that the Francis Moore figure was an estimate and the Miller map gave the true width of Broad Street. Now that the 1736 map and Francis Moore both agree it may be assumed that Broad Street was laid out with a width of seventy-five feet. We know that the front steps of the Hawkins house infringed on the street a matter of six inches. The depression in the old land surface at the north side of the street marks the edge of the road in that area. Further work will possibly locate fences or hedge lines that will clarify this point.

_The Mark Carr Lot_