(born about 1823; died 15 July 1887), clergyman. (Elder Rainboth, Erastus Rainboth, E.R. Rainboth) Born probably in the St. Andrew’s and Lachute area of Quebec. About 1849 he was converted under the ministry of the Rev. John Dempsey. At the beginning of 1850s he was a student at Madison College, Madison, N.Y. Afterwards, he was a Baptist pastor and travelling missionary in the Ottawa Valley. He was pastor of the Notfield Baptist Church, in the 16th Concession of Indian Lands, GC, from Aug. 1854 till Sept. 1864, though apparently with some interruption following his resignation in the second year of this ministry. In 1864, in the final year of his ministry at Notfield, a religious revival took place in the Notfield Church which has sometimes been assumed to have spread north and to have helped to set in motion the revival in the Rev. Daniel Gordon’s Church at the present St. Elmo. The revival in the church at St. Elmo is described under the name of “The Great Revival” in the novels of Ralph Connor (see Rev. C.W. Gordon). Among those converted in the Notfield revival were Peter S. Campbell and Charles Sinclair, and perhaps, though there are problems of identification, Charles McNaughton.
While pastor at Notfield, Rainboth seems to have travelled a good deal, serving Baptist communities which had no settled pastor. After leaving GC his pastorates included one at Osnabruck Township, Stormont County. In the Canadian Baptist of 30 March 1865, Rainboth published a charming letter describing how a group of young people travelling in sleighs from Notfield invaded his Osnabruck house for an evening of good food (which they brought with them) and with a gift for Mrs Rainboth. In 1881 he was living at St-Louis, Que. By 1882 he was at Beauharnois, Que., where he resided till his death. During his GC pastorate he was married, probably at St-Jerome, Que., on 8 July 1857, to Lydia D. Cummings, of the Papineauville area of Quebec. He played a leading role in establishing the Baptist chapel at Riceville. At the opening services of the chapel in 1873, during which Rainboth preached the inaugural sermon, one of the other speakers was the Congregationalist minister of Indian lands, the Rev. W.A. Peacock. (Rev. John King journal) The Rev. C.W. Gordon (Ralph Connor) vividly describes in his autobiography the Rev. Daniel Gordon’s stormy debate with a Baptist minister called R. Rainboth. This minister may have been Erastus Rainboth of Notfield, or the Rev. John King under a totally mistaken name.
Biog. information on Rainboth gathered by Rev. William E.J. Toller of Edmonton, and kindly supplied to the present author in letter of 17 June 1977 * information also kindly supplied by Canadian Baptist Archives, McMaster University (the archives have a photograph of Rainboth) * Rainboth and the Great Revival: MacGillivray & Ross 91, 685 and MacMillan, Kirk, 267, 431-432 * Rev. D.D. McArthur, “Yester Years,” The Canadian Baptist, 8 Sept. 1938 * “Revival at Notfield,” The Canadian Baptist, 24 Nov. 1864 * “Good News from Roxborough,” The Canadian Baptist, 29 Dec. 1864 * “The Churches of the Ottawa Association,” The Canadian Baptist, 21 Dec. 1865 (note on his itinerant services while pastor at Notfield) * “The Story of the Dominionville Baptist Church,” The Maxville Messenger, June 1920 * “The Great Revival of 1864,” The Maxville Messenger, Nov. 1920 * refs. to Rainboth in the journal of the Rev. John King, Canadian Baptist Archives, McMaster University * Sinclair 15 * Thomas 657, 660 * C.W. Gordon, Postscript to Adventure (1938) 26-27, also Ralph Connor, Torches through the Bush (1934) Chapter XI * conducts marriage of James Ferguson, M. D., at Riceville, Canada Lancet, 1:2 (15 April 1863) 16