Raymond Paddock Gorham was born in the parish of Kingston, Kings County, New Brunswick, in 1885. He attended MacDonald Consolidated School and MacDonald College, graduating from McGill University with a B.S.A. in 1911. He married Marie Tanner, a school teacher, in 1913, and they had four children.

Raymond P. Gorham and his family resided initially in Fredericton, N.B. where he worked as an entomologist with the provincial Department of Horticulture. He also lectured at agricultural schools located in Woodstock and Sussex, and later taught a course in agriculture at the provincial Normal School. In April 1919 he was appointed to the Division of Entomology in the federal government, working for four years in Nova Scotia. He returned to Fredericton and took the position of chief of the Field Crop and Garden Insects Division of the federal government's Entomological Laboratory, a post he held until his death.

Gorham displayed a keen interest in history and archaeology, and was particularly interested in the histories of Fredericton and the parish of Kingston, New Brunswick ecclesiastical history, agricultural history, and the Stone Age. He collected and catalogued a number of Stone Age tools and implements and compiled information on his family history. He researched and wrote extensively on a variety of historical, archaeological, and entomological subjects. Raymond Paddock Gorham died in York County on 28 July 1946.