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