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Agency History
Census Records & Family History
Historical Censuses & Surveys
Galleries & Archives
Census Directors
Census Directors
The nominal head of the early censuses was the secretary of state, but management responsibility was actually devolved to the U.S. marshal in each state. These marshals collected and tabulated their own returns; the secretary of state only oversaw the final compilation and tabulation of the data.
By 1840, the increasing standardization of census questionnaires and the increasingly complicated process of conducting the census made it clear that more leadership at the federal level was necessary. Secretary of State John Forsythe appointed William Augustus Weaver as the first "superintending clerk of the census" in that year. Weaver and his successors oversaw the technical aspects of the census, including designing questionnaires, and more closely managed the tabulation process.
By 1870, the leader of the Census Office was the "superintendent of the census." The superintendent oversaw the entire census-taking process, and usually held the position from a year before the census until the final tabulations had been published.
After the Census Office became a permanent agency in 1902, the first director was the incumbent superintendent, William Rush Merriam. He set the standard for many directors of the U.S. Census Bureau over the next hundred years by focusing on external issues such as congressional testimony and leaving technical operations to the experts.
This section contains short biographies for each head of the census, from Thomas Jefferson in 1790 to the Census Bureau's most recent director, Robert Santos.
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Director Robert Santos
Robert Santos is the 26th director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Previous Director Dr. Steven Dillingham
Dr. Steven Dillingham was sworn in as the 25th Census Bureau Director on January 7, 2019 and resigned from the office on January 20, 2021.
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Previous Director John H. Thompson
Thompson had been President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago since 2008.
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Previous Director Robert M. Groves
Prior to leading the Census Bureau, Groves was a professor at the University of Michigan and director of its Survey Research Center.
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Previous Director Steven H. Murdock
Dr. Murdock was nominated by President George W. Bush for director on June 18, 2007, and the Senate confirmed him unanimously in December of that year.
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Previous Director Charles Louis Kincannon
A native of Waco, TX, Charles Kincannon began his career as a statistician in the Census Bureau in 1963.
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Previous Director Kenneth Prewitt
Ken Prewitt was born in 1936 in Alton, IL. He attained his B.A. from Southern Methodist University in 1958.
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Previous Director Martha Farnsworth Riche
A native of Ann Arbor, Martha Riche received a B.A. and M.A. in economics from the University of Michigan.
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Previous Director Barbara Everitt Bryant
The first woman to be director of the Census Bureau, Barbara Bryant was born in April 1926 in Ann Arbor, MI.
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Previous Director John G. Keane
John Keane, a native of Indiana, brought his marketing and strategic planning experience to the Census Bureau.
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Previous Director Bruce Chapman
Bruce Chapman was born in 1940 in Evanston, IL. He went on to graduate with honors from Harvard University in 1962.
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Previous Director Manuel D. Plotkin
Before President Jimmy Carter appointed him to be director of the Census Bureau, Manuel Plotkin was a longstanding executive at Sears.
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Previous Director Vincent P. Barabba
Vincent Barabba was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1934. He graduated from Woodbury Business College in 1954.
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Previous Director George Hay Brown
George Hay Brown was born in February 1910 in Denver, CO, where his father was a doctor with the U.S. Army.
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Previous Director A. Ross Eckler
A. Ross Eckler spent most of his professional career at the Census Bureau, working his way up through the ranks to eventually become director.
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Previous Director Richard M. Scammon
Richard Scammon, director of the Census Bureau during parts of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was best known as an elections expert.
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Previous Director Robert Wilbur Burgess
Born in 1887 in Newport, Rhode Island, Robert Burgess graduated from Brown University.
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Previous Director Roy Victor Peel
Roy Peel was born in 1896 in Des Moines, Iowa. Service in World War I interrupted his college education.
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Previous Director James Clyde Capt
James Capt was born in Long Branch, Texas, in 1888 and later attended Baylor University.
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Previous Director William Lane Austin
William Lane Austin rose through the ranks at the Census Bureau, climbing from clerk to director, over the course of his career.
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Previous Director William Mott Steuart
William Steuart was born in 1861 in Texas, on a ranch that his parents were homesteading.
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Previous Director Samuel Lyle Rogers
Samuel Rogers was born in Franklin, North Carolina in 1859.
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Previous Director William J. Harris
William Harris was born in Cedartown, Georgia in 1868.
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Previous Director Edward Dana Durand
Durand was born, in 1871, in Romeo, Michigan.
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Previous Director Simon Newton Dexter North
North was born in Clinton, New York in 1848, graduating from Hamilton College in 1869.
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Previous Director William Rush Merriam
Born in 1849, the successful St. Paul banker was the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives.
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Previous Director Carroll D. Wright
Wright was born in July 1840, in Dunbarton, New Hampshire.
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Previous Director Robert Percival Porter
Robert Porter was born in Norwich, England, but was sent as a child to live with relatives in California.
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Previous Director Charles W. Seaton
Seaton was born in Norfolk, New York, in 1831 and served as an officer in the Civil War with the First Vermont Sharpshooters.
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Previous Director Francis Amasa Walker
Walker was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1840.
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Previous Director J.D.B. (James Dunwoody Brownson) DeBow
DeBow was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1820 and moved to New Orleans as a young man.
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Previous Director Joseph C.G. (Camp Griffith) Kennedy
Joseph Kennedy was a major innovator in census taking; specializing schedules to cover specific demographic areas and centralizing data processing.
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Previous Director William Augustus Weaver
In 1840, Secretary of State John Forsythe appointed William Weaver the first superintending clerk of the census.
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Previous Director Martin Van Buren
Van Buren was the first president who was born after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in Kinderhook, New York in 1782.
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Previous Director John Quincy Adams
Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1767.
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Previous Director Robert Smith
Smith was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1757.
Page Last Revised - April 28, 2023
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