This collection consists of letters and postcards written by Galbraith Ward, Class of 1915, and Marquand Ward, Class of 1917, to Margaret Heyerdahl, who was their childhood caretaker (or "nurse"). Galbraith and Marquand Ward were sons of Henry Galbraith Ward, a United States Circuit judge, and Mabel Marquand Ward, who died in 1896. Both Ward brothers grew up in New York City, attended Princeton as undergraduates, served in France in World War I, and died in 1918. Allan Marquand, Princeton Class of 1874 and later Professor of Art and Archaeology, was their maternal uncle.

Margaret Heyerdahl took care of the Wards when they were children, and they wrote to her frequently and affectionately throughout their lives. One of Heyerdahl's later addresses was care of Mrs. Tracy Dows in Rhinebeck, New York. Heyerdahl had relatives in Norway.

The boys wrote the earliest letters or notes in the collection when they were still small children. The bulk of the letters span the years 1905 to 1918. They detail the Ward brothers' experiences at St. George's School, a boarding school in Newport, Rhode Island (Galbraith also attended and wrote from the Browning School in New York); at home in New York City, where they lived at 816 Madison Avenue and later at 1018 Madison Avenue; on summer vacations in places such as Shelter Island, Rhode Island and Maine; on pre-war visits to Europe; at Princeton; and from training camps or from the front during the first world war.

One folder contains later, post-war material including clippings about the Wards' deaths, photographs and photographic postcards showing their graves and groups of people in a cemetery in France; correspondence to Margaret Heyerdahl from Galbraith and Marquand's father Henry Galbraith Ward and their aunt Charlotte Ward; as well as correspondence from attorneys and copies of court documents regarding a bequest to Margaret Heyerdahl in Galbraith Ward's will.

A photograph album combines baby and childhood photos with photographs of the Wards as soldiers and clippings about their service and their deaths. Enclosed in the photograph album, now housed in folders, was various 1919 correspondence to Judge Henry Ward regarding the deaths of his sons, as well as some loose photographs, postcards and drawings. A small box of mementoes housed with the photograph album contains a flower from No Man's Land with the note "Galbraith picked it" and a letter from Galbraith; a fabric military collar insignia, and a passport cover from Norway.

The Wards used racial slurs to describe people in a few of their letters.