I had been taking the long way around to get to the census records by going through the family search site. But there’s an easier way: go directly to the census site itself at https://www.archives.gov/research/census

From there you can access gobs of information or go directly to particular census records such as the 1950 census.

And once there you can search on names, or in my case I was interested in all the records for a particular municipality. So I narrowed it down by state (Pennsylvania), county (Lebanon), and from there the various boroughs and townships and such are listed alphabetically.

And I found that there are two sets of records for Richland in 1950, which explains why it looked like the population was so small in 1950.

It’s easy to search through the records on the census site, or you can download them for later viewing on your on devices. The only problem with downloading them is the file names are not very helpful, so you’ll want to rename them as you download them.

Anyway, there was another surprise in store. The Barry family did not live on Church Street in 1950, but two blocks east of Chestnut in a lane on a farm. Carl Barry was already a contractor with his own company, but Helen Barry was not working as a teacher. Whether she had not yet begun her career or was just taking a break (Pam was a year old and presumably Philip was on his way), I couldn’t say.

I think I know the farm that they were living on. I think it’s the one that years later one of my Cub Scout den mothers lived on, but I can’t be sure.

Also, notice the entries following the Barry family: Mabel Zimmerman and her mother Mary Shanaman. They lived on a farm at the corner of Chestnut and Walnut. That’s the farm that years later was bought by Hart Beaver and his family.