Sir William Gooch, 1st Baronet (21 October 1681 – 17 December 1751) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1727 to 1749.

Gooch promoted the settlement of the Shenandoah Valley in order to buffer the rest of the colony from Indian attacks, and to prevent the French from settling the land.

However, in the early 1730s, Western expansion was fraught by the Iroquois invasion each spring, as settlements inevitably fell along their war-trails leading south.

[1] He had many military credentials, including fighting under John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in his campaigns in the Low Countries and as a colonel of Gooch's American Regiment with Admiral Edward Vernon in his expedition against Cartagena, New Grenada (now in Colombia), as part of the War of Jenkins' Ear.

During King George's War, Gooch received an appointment as brigadier-general in charge of the army raised to invade Canada, but declined.