Dr. Charles Christopher Parry was born on August 28, 1823, in Tewkesbury Borough, Gloucestershire, England.

He was a British-American botanist and mountaineer. In 1832, he moved with his family to Washington County, New York. After graduating from Union College in 1842, he studied medicine at the Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons and botany under John Torrey, Asa Gray, and George Engelmann. In 1846, Parry moved to Davenport, Iowa, to set up practice. He served as surgeon and botanist on the Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota in 1848 and on the United States-Mexican Boundary Survey from 1849 to 1852. He collected plants along the U.S.-Mexico border in California and later in Colorado, Utah, and other western states, many of which proved to be new species. He made the first barometric measurements of the heights of many of Colorado's mountains. He was the first to climb and measure Grays Peak. Parry Peak (4,082 m) in Colorado is named after him. In 1928, a monument in Evergreen, Colorado, was dedicated to his discovery of the Colorado Blue Spruce on Pikes Peak in 1862. He was the first person to become the botanist of the US Department of Agriculture at the Smithsonian Institution (1869-1871).

In 1854, he married Sarah M. Dalzell (1830–1858), and in 1859, he married Emily Richmond (1821–1915). He died on February 20, 1890, in Davenport, Scott County, Iowa.