The house has not always retained its proud yellow color. During war time, only battleship gray paint was available. The house was painted as part of its ordinary maintenance, and for a time it was forgotten that the house had once been yellow.
Thomas Walter Ward II died heavily in debt, and the Worcester County Institution for Savings foreclosed on the Ward farm. Henry Galbraith Ward, a relative who had summered at the house as a child, bought the 135 acre farm and its buildings for $4500. He neither lived at the house nor planned to...