Dr. Thomas Hawkins, town physician and one of the magistrates, was a member of the “Great Embarkation” of 1735 which arrived in February, 1736. His household consisted of his wife, Beatre, and servants Thomas Ayot and Richard Carpenter.[31] Work was started on the houses for the first settlers in February of 1736 and seems to have consisted at first of simple huts of poles covered with palmetto thatch. Francis Moore, on his arrival at Frederica in March of 1736 says that “Each family had a bower of palmetto leaves, finished upon the back street in their own lands; the side towards the front street was set out for their houses. These palmetto bowers were very convenient shelters, being tight in the hardest rains; they were about twenty foot long, and fourteen foot wide, and in regular rows, looked very pretty, the palmetto leaves lying smooth and handsome, and of a good color. The whole appeared something like a camp; for the bowers looked like tents, only being larger, and covered with palmetto leaves instead of canvas.”[32] By November of 1736 the first two houses were nearly complete, three stories high, made of brick.[33] It is possible that these two were the Hawkins and Davison houses. Dr. Hawkins said, in a letter to the Trustees in November, 1737, that he had added half as much more to the length of his house.[34] In August of 1740 he had made another addition valued at £60.[35] This completes the direct mention of buildings and additions to the Hawkins house but a deposition taken in South Carolina in 1741 describes the two houses in some detail and is quoted at length: [Illustration: _Architectural Drawing of Hawkins-Davison houses. Details based on historical documentation and archaeological evidence. Abreu & Robson, Architects._] [Illustration: _Hawkins-Davison houses from the east. Davison house in foreground._]