Sometimes a census record is all we have to indicate that an ancestor lived until a certain point in time and that enumeration is often used as a “last alive on” date. Whenever I see an unsourced death date of 1800, 1810, etc. for an ancestor in an online tree or any reference, I wonder:
did someone enter his death date as “after 1800” and did someone (or their software) strip the “after” from that date?
Several genealogists indicate that a relative died in 1800–no source. The last census in which he is recorded is 1800. While I don’t use these unsourced dates of death in my own records, I still wonder if there is any credence to the year of death they have. Did they find something that I have overlooked?
But when the year ends in a “0,” I really wonder if the “after” got stripped from the approximate date of death.
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I do the same thing for years ending in “5”. Both look a bit suspect until I can prove otherwise. Unless the tree in question actually has a reliable source, but the further back the date is, the less likely that is to happen.
A sad result of using this kind of a date is this: if a person has an Ancestry tree, and they copy this un-sourced date to their tree, it will prevent them from finding references to the person at a later date, which are actually available!
Or “before,” Such as not in the 1880 census…before 1880.
It is also possible the person died in the census year, but after being recorded in the census. I used to know someone who did so in 2010. People are also born in census years, change jobs, re-locate, get married, etc.