Back At The Archives Trying To Solve A Mystery - No Luck!

My first stop after breakfast was at the library in Sheringham in time for the doors to open at 9:30.  I spent the next hour scanning the records I had printed at the Norfolk Archives the day before and printing off a fresh copy of my notes so that I could continue with my quest of finding baptismal records for Stephen Moore and Sarah Page, and Benjamin Moore who I suspected was a child of my great-great grandparents but who had died only months before.  Then it was up to the station, onto the train and down to Norwich to arrive at the Norfolk Archives for 12:15.

I had spent a lot of time on Sunday and Monday on the FreeReg website searching for records on Sarah Page who was born in 1760 and married Stephen Moore in 1787 when they were 27 and 29 respectively.  Likewise for Stephen Moore who was born in 1758.  How do I know these dates?  This is where a bit of sleuthing and cross-checking comes into play.  Stephen Moore's burial entry in the Letheringsett Parish Register shows him as being 46 when he died in November of 1804 which means he would have been born around 1758.  And Sarah Moore's (nee Page) show her age on the bural entry as being 75 when she died in 1836 which would make her birth date around 1761.

To add another calculation to the plot, that would make Sarah and Stephen 27 and 29 when they got married.  Relatively speaking, this would be quite an old age for the two of them as most marriages occurred when both spouses were either in their late teens or early twenties.  So, back and forth we went from microfilm to microfiche to the FreeReg website.  From one parish to the next adjoining parish and back again.  From the Parish Registers to the Archdeacons' registers to the Bishop's Registers - assuming they were born to Church of England parents. No luck as I went from parish to parish searching the birth and marriage registers.

Which is what makes all of this work akin to detective work or finding a needle in the haystack.

To say nothing of the fact that I'm looking at untouched negative images that can really draw the eyeballs out of the sockets!  Here's an example of what I mean.  Can you decipher the writing?

 And here's what it looks like after I've printed it, scanned it, and cleaned it up a bit in my graphics software.

The Archives closed at 5:00 and I was down to the station by 5:25 with plenty of time to catch the 5:45 back to Sheringham.  We're back to the Norfolk Archives again tomorrow to see if we can solve the mystery of when and where Stephen Moore and Sarah Page were born.