From "The history of the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" by Thomas Williams Bicknell
"From Kenyon, a township in the parish of Winwick, County Lancaster, the surname Kenyon was derived as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. Since that time the family has flourished in Lancaster, one of its most notable and historic branches being the Kenyons of Peel, to whom many authorities trace the ancestry of the founder of the American family, John Kenyon, who it is claimed was a lineal descendant of Jordan de Lanton, lord of Kenyon, in the reign of Henry III., of England."