Mrs. Emma B. Norton provided funds for erection in 1924 of the original library building on the Eagle Rock campus of Occidental College, a gift in memory of her daughter, Mary Norton Clapp. Emma Hayes Norton and her husband, Matthew G. Norton, were originally from Winona, Minnesota, where Mr. Norton had a career with Laird, Norton Company, a lumber business. They later became residents of Pasadena, where their daughter Mary lived with her husband, Eben P. Clapp, at one time active as a medical doctor. Mr. Norton died in 1917, and in 1920 Mary Norton Clapp was killed in a tragic automobile accident.

Dr. Eben P. Clapp, a graduate of Northwestern University, married Mary Norton in 190l, and shortly thereafter became a resident of Pasadena. In 1909, he was elected to the Occidental Board of Trustees, serving until his death in 1947.

It was through the close family connection with Occidental that led Mrs. Matthew Norton in the early 1920s to provide funds for the library building in memory of her daughter. When the Mary Norton Clapp Library was dedicated in 1924, her son, Norton, was an Occidental freshman. He and Elizabeth Clapp McBride, of the Class of 1919, the daughter of Dr. Eben P. Clapp's first marriage, also became benefactors of the library bearing the Clapp name, a structure which grew through additions and renovations over the years, along with a major increment in book and periodical holdings.

By Jean Paule