A Burlington native whose family owned Lake Champlain Transportation, Cannon presented his ethnographic collections to the University in the 1890's. Cannon's collection was assembled from his travels to East India and Java; a group of artifacts which he referred to as 'East India exotica and bric a brac'. The collection was initially housed in a hip-roofed pavilion especially designed for Cannon's collection which was added to the west side of the Old Library after the building had been moved from College Row to make room in 1891 for The Williams Science Hall.

When the Robert Hull Fleming Museum was built in the early 1930's, the Cannon family provided monies for the re-installation of the Cannon Collection in the east wing on the main floor. The collection is no longer displayed in toto. Cannon's gift initiated what was to become the first university program to introduce the new field of anthropology, a discipline that today is taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Cannon Room, c. 1970, Fleming Museum