The U.S. Census Bureau has always been a home to veterans of the 

United States armed forces. Superintendent of the 1840 Census, William 

Augustus Weaver, received wounds in the War of 1812. Francis Amasa 

Walker, the highly influential superintendent of the 1870 and 1880 

Censuses, was a veteran of the Civil War and former prisoner of war. In 

1890, census legislation gave honorably discharged veterans of the 

armed services preference for employment as enumerators—a practice 

that continues to this day and one that has been further strengthened 

and expanded through civil service reforms. In 2015, for instance, 

the U.S. Department of Commerce, to which the Census Bureau 

belongs, employed 5,684 veterans (12 percent of its workforce). 

The Census Bureau is proud to utilize the proven discipline and 

motivation of this unique and patriotic workforce.

Lyman Walter Vere Kennon was born on September 2, 1858, in 

Providence, Rhode Island, to Charles Henry Vere Kennon and Adelaide 

(Hall) Kennon. Although he was born in Rhode Island, Lyman grew up in 

New York City after his father, a Quartermaster General in the 2nd Rhode Island Cavalry, died on May 23, 

1863, in Louisiana, and his mother remarried George G. Lambertson. On June 14, 1876, Lyman entered the 

United States Military Academy at West Point but graduated with the Class of 1881 after being suspended 

1 year for hazing. After graduating from West Point, newly commissioned Lieutenant Kennon served with 

the cavalry as they moved the Ute people to a reservation in northeastern Utah.

In 1883, Lyman married Anne Beecher Rice. One year later, he 

wrote the Manual of Duties of Guards and Sentinels, which the

United States quickly adopted as its first manual describing 

guard duty. Throughout the remainder of the 1880s, Lyman 

produced a host of other influential publications and served as 

an aid to General George Crook. After Crook’s death in 1890, 

Lyman served with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Central 

America, where he surveyed a possible route for an interoceanic canal and Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

After the Spanish-American War began on April 21, 1898,

Lyman, Commander of Company E of the 6th Infantry Regiment, became the second American officer to 

reach the blockhouse on the top of San Juan Hill. For his actions, Lyman’s superiors recommended him for 

a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel. Following the end of the Spanish-American War on December 

10, 1898, Lyman served as the acting U.S. secretary of commerce and agriculture in Cuba before being 

ordered to the Philippines, where he participated in numerous military actions in the Philippine-American 

War. During the war, Lyman also served as the U.S. military governor of the province of Ilocos Norte 

between November 1900 and March 1901.

In 1901, Lyman moved to Iligan on the island of Mindanao to monitor the Moro population which fought 

against U.S. forces between April 13, 1902, and July 4, 1902. When the first chapter of the Moro Rebellion 

Lyman Walter Vere Kennon

U.S. Army Brigadier General, Census Enumerator, and Author

Brig. General Lyman W.V. Kennon 

at Camp Grant, Illinois (c. 1917).

Chicago Daily News-Achieves 

of the Chicago Daily News.

L.W.V. Kennon, his wife Anne, and their two servants were 

enumerated in Washington, DC,

according to this 1910 Census schedule.
ended in July 1902, U.S. civilian and military officials and various members of the 

Philippines’ diverse population focused on the task of governing and rebuilding the 

areas affected by the conflict. Thanks to the 1902 Philippine Organic Act, the newly 

elected Philippine Assembly commenced a government reorganization. To properly 

elect a representational body, they needed a census. However, in the chaos of a 

former warzone that spread across hundreds of islands and people that spoke over 

175 languages, the only people who had the knowledge to act as enumerators of 

the fledgling territory were U.S. soldiers. In his position as a respected military 

commander and dedicated public servant with some knowledge of Islam and other 

local cultures, Kennon perfectly fit the mold for a census enumerator in the Iligan 

district of the Philippines in 1903.

Prior to the commencement of the census on March 2, 1903, Kennon received his 

schedules and maps by mail from Manila. Aware of the deeply suspicious nature of the Moros, the first act 

of Kennon as enumerator was to meet with the local datos and sultans to establish a plan for the census. 

After explaining the purpose of the census and securing the cooperation of the local leaders, Kennon made 

subsequent visits to the central points in his enumeration district and encouraged various chiefs to take the 

census schedules back to their rancherias, fill them out, and then return the completed schedules. 

Because some of the chiefs feared U.S. officials would use the census data for tax purposes, or just 

expressed a general suspicion toward the enumeration process, Kennon 

occasionally offered relucent chiefs a small payment or a gift in exchange for their 

participation in the census. Kennon also demonstrated his knowledge of local 

customs and alleviated some of the chiefs’ fear that they would be forced to 

adopt American culture. Kennon’s various strategies proved successful, even as 

he acknowledged “the result...represents the best obtainable [data] in the time at 

my disposal or that could be obtained except by a house-to-house enumeration, 

which was...entirely impracticable.” At the conclusion of census operations in the 

province of Misamis, Kennon had enumerated 3,239 members of the population

in Iligan. He then teamed up with John J. Pershing and enumerated a combined 

total of 95,893 Moros living in the Iligan and Lake Lanao districts.

By the time he left the Philippines around 1906, Kennon had overseen the 

construction of the Iligan to Lake Lanao Road in 1903 and the completion of the 

Benguet Road in 1905. Three years after its completion, American Governor 

General Leonard Wood issued an executive order that renamed the Benguet 

Road the Kennon Road, in honor of its creator. For completing the Kennon Road 

in 18months, when many people expected the project to take 3 years, Kennon 

received a personal letter of commendation from President Theodore Roosevelt. 

After serving in the Philippines, Kennon spent the next few years traveling around 

the world performing a wide range of duties which included examining railroads 

in Japan, serving as a delegate and military attaché to the 1906 Pan-American Congress in Brazil, and 

surveying part of the border between Alaska and Canada. In 1910, Kennon completed his graduate studies 

at the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Five years after graduating from the U.S. Army War 

College, Kennon commanded the 161st Depot Brigade which was stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border and 

supported U.S. forces during the U.S.-Mexico Border War.

Finally, in 1918, Kennon assumed command of the 86th Infantry Division, after training 17,000 troops at 

Camp Greene, North Carolina, and commanding the 171st Infantry Brigade as the U.S. built up its military 

forces and began fully participating in the First World War. Unfortunately, medical issues prevented him 

from leading his division when they departed for Europe. Soon afterwards, Brigade General Kennon passed 

away on September 9, 1918, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. We are grateful for a lifetime of 

service that benefited not just the Census Bureau, but the United States, many Latin American nations, and 

the fledgling country of the Philippines.

Volume One of the Final 

Reports for the 1903 Census of 

the Philippines Islands.

Kennon Road construction crew 

near Camp 5, Tuba, Benguet,

setting explosives into a sheer cliff 

of the Bued River Cayon

(c. 1903).

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

HB-22-0004