Founding year: the first Parish post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
History grade
What drives Parish’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Parish is more historic than 82% of U.S. towns. All 3 inputs are above most U.S. towns; its share of homes from before 1940 ranks highest and its National Register listings lowest.
A−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Parish’s overall grade.
New York towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical New York town has 12.3 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Parish’s 12.4 sits near the middle of its state (50% of New York towns have fewer) while its 3 historic buildings outnumber those of 65% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from B+ to A−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±5.1 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Parish’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Lost a third of its people between 1860 and 1940, then more than doubled.
19 censuses, 1830–2010.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Parish’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Parish, building by building, 1898–1911
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1898Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
The story so far
Parish, in brief
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Parish yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Parish is a town in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 2,558 at the 2010 census. The Town of Parish was created from the Town of Mexico in 1828. There is a village called Parish in the town.
Its first post office opened in 1833. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 2,558 to 2,398 (-6%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Parish in 1917
Passages that mention Parish, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Memorials of a Yorkshire parish1917 · page 182Read the page →
Read the text
in 1895 ; two more bells were given by Miss Eliza Leckie, of Darrington, and dedicated by Dr. Maclagan, Archbishop of York, in the following year. Later the church was lighted by acetylene gas, and in 1914 the Yorkshire Parish Register Society printed its registers. All these things are, of course, outward and material signs of a revival ; the deeper significance of that may be best judged by the parishioners themselves, who for many years have seen the services of
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Memorials of a Yorkshire parish1917 · page 65Read the page →
Read the text
of Parliament, parish registers — which in law are the property of the incumbent for the time being — were, until comparatively recent times, very carelessly kept and looked after, and Burn, in his History of Parish Registers, gives many instances of their having been sold by rectors and vicars for waste-paper, and even used for such domestic purposes as lighting fires and singeing geese. Even nowadays they are very much at the mercy of the parochial
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Parish, 1833 to 2000
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Chezwick Estates Mobile Home ParkLiberty Park Mobile Home ParkParish Center
Gone or out of use
Eichler AirportairportSchool Number 10schoolSchool Number 12schoolSchool Number 2schoolSchool Number 4schoolSchool Number 5schoolSchool Number 6schoolSchool Number 7school
5cemeteries and burying grounds inside Parish
BidwellDutch HillGetmanPleasant LawnWright
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Stories next door
History across the town line
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Parish post office opened in 1833, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Parish rank for history?
Parish is more historic than 82% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Parish?
One place: the Pleasant Lawn Cemetery (listed 2005).
How old are the homes in Parish?
25% of Parish’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±5.1 points), against a typical 27% for a New York town; the median home was built in 1978.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (1), the Library of Congress (1), the National Register of Historic Places (1), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
Date?
