Parrish is an unincorporated community in northwestern Manatee County, Florida, United States.
The community is located near the intersection of U.S. 301 and State Road 62 and is part of the North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Parrish contains the Florida Railroad Museum, which operates weekend passenger rides round trip from Parrish about 6 miles (9.7 km) northeast to Willow.
The first "settlers" in the area were William B. Hooker and William H. Johnson, who established a plantation named Oak Hill in 1850 in an unsuccessful attempt to grow sea island cotton. This plantation burned down in the Seminole Wars but the area continued to be referred to as Oak Hill. William Turner made a homestead at Oak Hill in 1865 but only stayed for a few years before establishing Bradenton.
In 1868, Turner sold the land to Crawford Parrish and his wife Mary Bratcher VanZant. Parrish, a rancher and orange farmer originally from Georgia, sold his plantation on the banks of the Suwannee River that he had held since 1841 and moved to present day Parrish which was, at the time, still referred to as Oak Hill.
The Parish Post Office was established in 1879, effectively changing the spelling of the town's name to Parish, until 1950 when the spelling was officially changed back to Parrish. Compiled in the late 1930s and first published in 1939, the Florida guide listed Parrish's population as 721 and described it as "a citrus-fruit and vegetable shipping center". Parrish was a small agriculture community until the late 2000s when agricultural land began to be developed into residential subdivisions.
