Simeon Finds True Love

By Spring of 1813, Simeon ran out of excuses to stay in Windsor, and he finally had to return to his father's farm. In April, he was helping his brother cut cordwood for the next winter. I can personally attest to the fact that if you're doing cordwood, it's a good time to get your sons home.

Simeon found himself at loose ends. He tried to continue with an apprenticeship, and signed on with Major William Faye of the Rutland Herald, but left there after a week. In May, Simeon got a letter from a friend who had found work in Brattleboro. The letter mentioned that there might be employment in Brattleboro, so Simeon “gathered his belongings in a silk handkerchief” and walked 60 miles to Brattleboro. He ended up being hired by William Fessenden for 80 cents a day, to print Webster's spelling book. Simeon said in his diary that he operated “8 two-pull hand presses; each requiring two able-bodied men to work it. (page 31 in Yeoman). Fessenden also ran a bookstore, and one of the perks of his job was that he could borrow any books he wanted from the bookstore.

While Simeon was in Brattleboro he got a letter from Major Faye offering him a better job. Apparently Major Fay didn't hold it against Simeon for leaving his apprenticeship so quickly, possibly because there wasn't enough work for Simeon there at the time. Fay had just begun publishing “Watt's Psalms and Hymns”.

Simeon stayed in Rutland for 13 months. While he was there, he joined a social club that called themselves “The Beauties”. Simeon remained friends with “The Beauties”, and exchanged letters with them for the rest of his life. “The Beauties” met at each others' houses regularly, for dinner, drink and conversation about books and other intellectual pursuits. They also attended parties together. Simeon associated with two “girls of wealth and position”, and it appears that either one of those girls would have been happy to have been courted by Simeon.

Simeon, however, had his eye on another girl, who was of neither wealth nor position, nor old enough to marry. Pamela Goddard was 16 years old when Simeon met her. Her father, a clockmaker and silversmith, was in poor health. Simeon fell in love with her, and vowed that if her father died, he would take care of Pamela, her four siblings and her mother, Charity.

In the meantime, however, things were not going well. The work dried up in Rutland, and Simeon went back to Windsor looking for work and couldn't find a job. 1815 was the first year in a three year economic depression. Also, 1816 was the year without a summer. A volcano eruption in Indonesia caused the disruption of weather patterns around the world. 1816 was called the year without the summer throughout the United States, and Vermonters called it “1800 and froze to death”.

During the summer of 1816, there was a frost every month. Craftsbury and Montpelier had a foot of snow in June. An article in Spooner's Vermont Journal, in Windsor, said, “It is extremely cold for this time of year. The late frosts have killed the corn. It is not probable that enough will get ripe for seed for next year. There is not sufficient hay to winter cattle upon and nothing with which to fatten them this fall.” (vermonthistory.org “The Year Without A Summer”) Simeon doesn't mention “the year without a summer” in his diary, but he does mention that hay cost $16 to $18 a ton. Vermont lost at least 10,000 people that year, when people gave up on Vermont and moved to places where it was easier to grow crops.

Finally Simeon had to go back to Lemuel's farm once again, except that this time, Lemuel's farm was in New Ipswich, New Hampshire. He decided that if he couldn't find a job as a printer he would start his own printing company, in an old blacksmith's shop on his father's farm. He went to Boston to buy some secondhand print. It was the first time he had ever been in a city that big, and he was sure he would be “tricked” by big city people looking to take advantage of a country traveler, but he conducted his business there without any trouble. Soon he was printing in his little blacksmith/printing shop New Testaments which he sold for 28 cents apiece. His 11 year old sister helped run the printing press and set the type. Through it all, he continued to court Pamela Goddard by writing letters.

Simeon broke even on the New Testaments, but he didn't make any money. Still, he had the type he had bought in Boston, and it was paid for. He decided to start a newspaper in either Keene, or Brattleboro, and finally decided that Brattleboro would be the better choice. Everyone advised him not to start a newspaper. For one thing, the economy wasn't good. For another thing, the positive outcome of the War of 1812 had been the death of the party, and at least one of Simeon's advisers told him that the lack of political rivalry in the “Era of Good Feelings” would cause a newspaper to be a “Miss Nancy affaire” meaning boring and lackluster. One person, however, did have some faith in Simeon, saying, “This young Ide may succeed, he's tough enough to live on a rock.”

Simeon might have been tough enough to live on a rock, but Simeon didn't want to bring Pamela, her mother and her sisters and brothers to live on a rock. He started his newspaper in Brattleboro and called it “The AmericanYeoman”. He rented some rooms in G.F. Atherton's store,near the Post Office on a corner of Main Street and set up his press. With his brother Truman as his apprentice, Simeon worked 16-18 hours a day. Before long he had 400 subscribers and was earning a living. When Jesse Cochran wanted to sell the “Vermont Republican” in Windsor, Simeon bought that paper, merged it with “The American Yeoman” and moved back to Windsor. It is impossible to trace the ownership of the “Vermont Republican” with absolute certainty before this, but I think it was founded by Oliver Farnsworth and Sylvester Churchill, who Simeon had originally been apprenticed to, then sold to Jesse Cochran, who sold it to Simeon. Simeon merged the paper with the American Yeoman and called it the Vermont Republican and Yeoman. He bought “Spooner's Journal”, merged that with the “Vermont Republican and Yeoman”, and called the new paper “The Vermont Republican and Journal”. I think.

In 1818 Simeon felt he was well enough established to marry Evelina Pamela Goddard on March 11, in Rutland, with a few family friends and a few members of his old club “The Beauties” as witnesses. Simeon wrote in his diary 55 years later that, “ No length of time will obliterate the gratitude I owe to my heavenly father for so ordering my goings in the days of my youthful wanderings, that I shunned the allurements of wealth and high position and remained steadfast to my first love.” (Here I think Simeon is referring to the two girls of wealth and position) “Next to this is my debt of gratitude to her sainted mother who gave me so pure, so loving, so dutiful and so confiding a helpmeet. I was not worthy of so bright a jewel.” He also says that for the next 30 years, his family consisted of between 10 and 15 people, including his wife, his 10 children, his mother's wife, Charity Goddard, who died in 1857, and his wife's siblings, Edward, Nathan, Harriet and Charlotte Goddard.