William G. Gooderham

William Gooderham Sr. was a Canadian distiller, businessman, and banker. He was the founder of the Gooderham and Worts company.

Born in Scole, Norfolk, England, the son of James and Sarah Gooderham, Gooderham emigrated to York, Upper Canada (now Toronto), in 1832 to invest and partner in a wind-powered flour mill with his brother-in-law, James Worts. Briefly operating as Worts and Gooderham until Worts' death in 1834, Gooderham continued to operate the mill as the William Gooderham Company.

In 1837, he added a distillery to make efficient use of surplus and second-grade grain. Having taken Worts' son, James Gooderham Worts, under his guidance since Worts' death, they became partners in 1845 and renamed the company as Gooderham and Worts.

Expanding their business, they introduced gas for illumination, expanded the use of steam power in the plants and built their own wharf to ship their consignments - by the 1860s they owned schooners on the Great Lakes. During the 1860s and 1870s, Gooderham was a community and business leader in the Toronto industrial landscape and in transportation and financial services, as well as on the stock exchange, and in the council and the board of arbitration of the Toronto Board of Trade.

In the summer of 1842, he participated with Bishop John Strachan in the founding meeting of Little Trinity Anglican Church, where he later was a warden for 30 years. A marble memorial for Gooderham is mounted on the west wall inside the church.

In 1864, he was appointed president of the Bank of Toronto.

His son George Gooderham was a businessman and philanthropist, his grandson George Horace Gooderham was a businessman and politician, and another grandson Albert Gooderham was a financier and philanthropist. His descendants' significance was not limited to Canada: his great-grandson, Dean Gooderham Acheson, born and raised in Connecticut, would serve as the US Secretary of State.

His son Charles Horace Gooderham built a "country property", a Georgian manor in northern Mississauga (929 Old Derry Road) in 1870, but sold in 1884 and is now the Rotherglen School Meadowvale Elementary Campus, a private Montessori school.

William Gooderham, was co-Founder with James Worts of the firm Gooderham & Warts, Millers and Merchants, about 1857

In 1831 Gooderham’s brother-in-law, James Worts, began a large immigration of their two families to Upper Canada. Worts established himself as a flour miller at the mouth of the Don River near York (Toronto) and began construction of a windmill. In 1832 Gooderham brought over to York a company of some 54 persons: members of his own and of Worts’s family, as well as servants and 11 orphans. Gooderham invested the £3,000 which he had brought with him in Worts’s milling business and the two brothers-in-law formed the partnership of Worts and Gooderham. It ended with Worts’s death in 1834. Gooderham continued the firm but changed its name to William Gooderham, Company.