Simeon leaves Windsor

As in the case of Lemuel's loss of the election to state legislature, Simeon's hard-boiled Republican politics led to a financial setback. After Andrew Jackson was elected President, Simeon had a visitor in the shop. A representative from the Democratic Party came in and asked Simeon about the political leanings of his paper and the print shop. It should have been pretty obvious what the political leanings of the paper were, since it was called “The Vermont Republican and Journal”. Simeon told him that he was a Republican, but he would heartily support any measures of the Jackson Administration that he considered good for the country. This was not what the visitor wanted to hear, and Simeon lost the postal contract to another printing company whose bid was actually higher than Simeon's. This was a loss of $3,000 a year in cash, in an era when hard cash was pretty rare. Simeon realized after he lost the bid that had he said he was a Democrat, he would have kept the contract. On the other hand, who would have believed him? Political contracts are good while they last, but they always come to an end with a change of administration.

Even with the loss of the postal contract, business still prospered. The new printing press was powered by horse power. A blind horse walked on a track and the turning track powered the press. As time went on, the press demanded more power to keep up with the volume of printing, so Simeon moved the presses to the old woolen factory at the south end of the village, on the second fall from the River on Mill Brook. As long as there was enough water in Mill Brook to power the press, this worked out, but when the brook was low, there wasn't enough power to run the press.

While Simeon was trying to deal with the issues of the printing business, his brother Truman died. Truman had just been put in charge of the newspaper when he died at age 28, leaving his wife and year old son. Simeon and Evelina lost a two year old daughter at this same time, Frances, in 1831. When Truman's wife died in 1835, Simeon became the guardian of their son John.

While he was trying to figure out how he was going to deal with the seasonal lack of waterpower from Mill Brook, Simeon was in Claremont, New Hampshire buying paper from the Claremont Manufacturing Company. He noticed that there was plenty of waterpower serving the mill and wondered if there was enough room there for his printing presses. A couple of weeks later, he sold his papermaking, printing presses and bookstore to the Claremont Manufacturing Company, for shares in the company. At the time, Claremont was up and coming and shares in the company were worth a great deal. Property prices in Claremont were also sky high, and Simeon bought a house in Claremont in the middle of an era of property speculation in Claremont. On the other hand, Windsor was going through a decline. Simeon's Windsor house ended up being on the market for several years, and he finally sold it at a loss.

Simeon left Windsor a fairly wealthy man, but his fortunes continued to decline in Claremont.

The Claremont Manufacturing Company experienced some financial reversals, which caused his stock to lose $40,000 in worth in one year. These financial reversals led the company to sell some of it's water rights, allowing other companies to build dams on the river, lessening the waterpower to their own mills. The worst setback came when Simeon won the bid on the printing constract for Webster's Dictionary. The other directors of the company decided to decline the bid, because they would have to make some readjustments and financial investments that they didn't want to make in order to fulfill the bid. The Merriam company got the bid instead. The Merriam Webster dictionary was almost the Ide Webster Dictionary. In 1838, Simeon sold his shares in the Claremont Manufacturing Company to his sons Lemuel and George, and went back to running a hand press. He also worked off and on for other printers. He died at the home of his daughter in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1889.

Simeon's daughter Mary died in 1844, and his beloved firstborn, Harriet, died in 1854. His daughter Agnes married her cousin John and died four years later. John himself died on a Virginia battlefield during the Civil War. Simeon's wife, the love of his life, Evalina died three years later, in 1857, at age 57. Simeon outlived his son , who died in 1886, by 6 years. His son Lemuel died in Middlesex Massachusetts in 1906 at age 80. His daughter Sarah was his last child to die. She died in 1920. Sarah married Reverend Alonzo Flanders and lived most of her adult life in Chester, Vermont. It was her son Louis Flanders who wrote the biography of Simeon, “Simeon Ide, Yeoman, Freeman, Pioneer Printer”. Ellen died in Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1907. Because Simeon died in Roxbury at the home of his daughter, it might be reasonable to assume that he died in Ellen's house. Julia married Henry Bostwick and they moved to Cayuga, New York. On a visit to New York to see Julia, Simeon met her mother-in-law and ended up bringing her home to Claremont as his second wife. Julia died in 1902. Charlotte never married. She became a school teacher and died at age 80 in 1918.