Despite being an emancipist Lord was made a magistrate by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and he became a frequent guest at government house.

He arrived in Sydney on 20 August 1791,[2] and the convict lad was assigned to Captain Thomas Rowley of the New South Wales Corps.

[5] He also became an auctioneer and prospered, a return made in 1804 said that the "estimated value of commercial articles imported from abroad in the hands of Simeon Lord and other dealers was £15,000".

No doubt Lord was a keen business man well able to look after his own interests, but he also had enterprise and courage, valuable qualities in the developing colony.

Lord was immensely litigious, and his affairs also took up a large percentage of the early appeals from the Colony of New South Wales to the Privy Council in England.

[9] Lord was engaged in trade with New Zealand, and in 1809 had the misfortune to lose a valuable cargo of sealskins in the events surrounding the Boyd massacre.

The captain flogged a Māori chief for alleged misbehaviour, and in consequence the vessel was raided and looted, nearly everyone on board being killed.

In spite of this disaster Lord joined in an attempt to obtain a monopoly to establish a flax plantation in New Zealand, and manufacture canvas and cordage from it in Sydney.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie in his dispatch to Viscount Castlereagh stating his intention to make Lord a magistrate described him as "an opulent merchant".

He was, however, a man of little education, and when John Bigge was making his investigations in 1819–20, the alleged unsuitability of Lord for his position was used as a stick to beat Macquarie.

Lord died "an immensely wealthy man" at the age of 69 on 29 January 1840 in the family home of "Banks House" at Botany.

One of his sons-in-law was another successful merchant in Sydney, Prosper de Mestre (1789–1844) who married his stepdaughter Mary Ann Black (1801–1861).