“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Her maiden name was Shilcock. She grew up with an aunt and older brother, married at eighteen and worked in a dress or textile plant in Decatur, South Dakota. She could not describe her duties. We had great trouble with the name ‘Decatur.’ This is my interpretation of what she said, and now I wonder if I made a mistake. Her pronounciation was something like Dek-a-tur, with the accent on the first syllable.

Supposedly it was here where she met her husband, who was a foreman in the plant. He died in 1962 in Marlboro, England. He was not English himself but was visiting relatives there. While her husband worked in the factory, he also owned a farm outside of Decatur, and after marriage the couple moved there. The ground was poor, and Malba mentioned the place several times in a rather derogatory way.

She couldn’t explain what she did, except to say that she ‘learned things.’ I asked further questions about her background and was told that her husband had grown alfalfa and wheat and tried tobacco and corn. She said again that he was a poor farmer and that her life had been a lonely one, since she had few friends. She knew the clerks in the town, and that was all. She did tell me, when asked, that Decatur had a population of about twelve thousand.

“Our road map does not list a town called Decatur in either North or South Dakota, nor any town with that high a population in that area. I may have confused the two names …