Professions by Census

On the 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Noah Coe (great-grandfather on my mother's side) is listed as "Harness Maker." At that time he was 30 and, apparently, single. He would eventually have 11 children. Here he is, age 8, in 1860 with his mother and step-father. It would seem his father, Henry, died in 1853 when Noah was an infant, and shortly after the family moved from the western edge of New York state to a suburb of Chicago. Certainly, in 1860, Noah's mother, Mary Ann, was married to James Beatty. But absent a death record, perhaps Henry and Mary Ann divorced and Henry returned to New York to live with a cousin where lived in 1880 a single retired farmer by the same name? Too often, the census doesn't provide any information on occupation or relation to head of house.....