William Gooderham, Sr.

Who was William Gooderham, Sr.?

William Gooderham was a Canadian distiller, businessman, and banker, 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 in 1832 to work in his brother-in-law's flour mill. In 1837, he added a distillery and soon started working with his nephew, James Gooderham Worts. The firm was renamed Gooderham and Worts.

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

His son William Gooderham, was a businessman and philanthropist; his grandson George Horace Gooderham was a politician and his other 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 in 1870, but sold in 1884 and is now the Rotherglen School Meadowvale Elementary Campus, a private Montessori school.