Grainger, John (1830–1891), clergyman and antiquarian, was born 19 March 1830 in Queen St., Belfast the eldest of six children (four boys and two girls) of David Grainger, a wealthy shipowner, and Maria (or Mary) Belinda Grainger (née Parke) of Whiteabbey, near Belfast. He attended Belfast Academy, where James Bryce (qv) was then a teacher. Grainger entered TCD 5 November 1849, and graduated BA (1855) and MA (1859) after a distinguished academic career. In 1870 he was awarded BD and DD degrees. Grainger worked in the family business till his father's death (1862), when he sold it and became a clergyman. Ordained deacon (1863) and priest (1864) in the Church of Ireland, he was a curate in Belfast, Ballyrashane, and two Dublin parishes including St Thomas's (1866–9), where he did outstanding work in organising what became the new parish of St Barnabas, and raised money for a new church. He was disappointed not to be chosen first rector of St Barnabas, but in 1869 became rector of Skerry and Racavan, Co. Antrim, and prebendary of Rasharkin 1879–91. He built Broughshane rectory and was active in religious education locally.
In 1876 he was elected MRIA; he had a lifelong interest in geology, Irish antiquities, and natural history, and travelled widely to collect a huge number of specimens illustrative of these subjects. His collection of fossils from the carboniferous limestone was particularly fine. Grainger's knowledge of his area was unrivalled in his day, and he gladly shared his expertise with colleagues, but published only one book, Affairs in Ulster 1607–43 (1882), and wrote a few papers in journals. Local history articles in newspapers were not republished, and his collections, though beautifully arranged, were mostly unlabelled and uncatalogued, so that, lacking information about provenance, their usefulness to later scholars is impaired. However, when Grainger gave his entire collection of 60,000 assorted specimens and curiosities to Belfast corporation just before he died, its importance was acknowledged, and it was housed in a specially built annexe of Belfast public library. This proved unsatisfactory, and the corporation had to undertake the building of a municipal museum, which opened in 1929; Grainger's material still forms a large part of the collections of what became in 1962 the Ulster Museum. Grainger was a member of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, and was first president of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. He died unmarried in Broughshane on 24 November 1891 after a long and painful illness, and was buried in the graveyard of St Patrick's church.