Reprinted from THE GEORGIA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Vol. XL No. 3 Sept. 1956 Publication No. 2 FORT FREDERICA ASSOCIATION...

By Margaret Davis Cate [1] The recent excavation of the building sites in the old Town of Frederica has stirred interest in this now “Dead Town” and in the fortification, Fort Frederica. Fort Frederica, located at a bluff on the western shore of St. Simons Island, Georgia, and on the Inland Waterway, was founded in 1736 by the British under the leadership of James Edward Oglethorpe, as an outpost to protect the colony of Georgia and the other British possessions to the north against the Spaniard

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 frame

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 c

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 t

At a point ninety-two feet north of the Hawkins house our excavation uncovered the remains of a tabby wall. It was badly decayed and was surrounded by the usual household debris which marks the sites of houses. It evidently marks the south or front wall of a house, built of tabby, on Lot 1 of the North Ward. This lot belonged to Mark Carr, founder of Brunswick. At the present time no records of a building on this lot are known. Time and funds did not permit further exploration of the structure..

Colonial archaeology is particularly fascinating because of the great quantities and intrinsic interest of the artifacts recovered. These objects are usually recognizable in spite of breakage and corrosion. They immediately call to mind a host of associations and functions that do much to enrich the picture of a living community. In many cases they are objects of considerable esthetic appeal and are prime museum exhibits. No detailed discussion of the various classes of colonial relics can be ma