1856 Intentions to Marry

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840368, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 18 2024

Page 009

District of Auckland Quarter ending 31 March 1856

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Folio	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
110		William Palmer Catherine Gleen	William Palmer Catherine Gleen 💍 1856/1058								Notice Void, Certificate not having been applied for within 3 months from date
119		Edward William Allen Frances Wynn	Edward William Allen Frances Wynne 💍 1856/1106								Notice Void, Certificate not having been applied for within 3 months from date
132	19 January 1856	Edward Philipe Martin Hannah White	Edward Philip Martin Hannah White 💍 1856/982	Bachelor Spinster	Painter	27 years 25 years	West Queen Street Auckland West Queen Street, Auckland	3 weeks 6 years	Dwelling house of Mr Francis White, west Queen Street, Auckland	56/37		2 February 1856	Revd John Whiteley
133	23 January 1856	William Mortimer Baines Mary Anne Dixon	William Mortimer Baines Mary Ann Dixon 💍 1856/1102	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	25 years 17 years	Auckland Auckland	3 weeks 1 month	The dwelling house of Joseph Coghlan, Vincent Street, Auckland	56/36	Peter Russell Dixon Father	23 February 1856	Revd J A Fletcher
134	26 January 1856	Charles C. Benjamin Mary Anne Coyle	Charles Benjamin Mary Ann Coyle 💍 1856/864	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Dressmaker	24 years 21 years	Auckland Victoria Street Auckland	1 1/2 years 8 years	Roman Catholic Church,	56/45		26 January 1856	Very Revd James McDonald
135	28 January 1856	David Burridge Elizabeth Coogan	David Burridge Elizabeth Coogan 💍 1856/1213	Widower Widow	Labourer	40 years 35 years	Panmure Panmure	8 months 9 years	Roman Catholic Chapel Panmure	56/113		28 January 1856	Revd H. J. Fynes
136	28 January 1856	Robert Bennett Jane Baker	[No matching marriage registration has been located]	Bachelor Widow	Settler	33 years 34 years	Auckland Auckland	11 years 4 years	St. Matthews Church, Auckland	No Folio Number		28 January 1856	Revd F. Thatcher

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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What is an Intention to Marry?

The 1854 Marriage Act required Pakeha settlers (and later Maori) to register their intention to marry from 1855. The resulting Notices of intention to marry were sent by the district registrars to the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages and bound into large volumes, each containing a year of notices. These registers were eventually deposited with Archives New Zealand.

What information does an ItM record?

A typical Intention to Marry notice records:

the bride and groom's full names
occupation of the groom (and sometimes the bride)
their ages
district where the marriage would take place
how long they had resided in the district
Where the marriage would take place (eg, a specific church)
Who would officiate the marriage (eg, a minister)
The date of the notice and also a date when the certificate was issued. Marriages had to take place within 3 months, and usually occurred within a week or so of the certificate date.
If one of the parties was under 21, a parent who consented to their marriage was usually specified

These details can provide clues for genealogical and historical research. Knowing the date and district makes it easier to look for wedding notices in Papers Past, and the amount of time that the parties had resided in a district can offer clues to whether a person was born in NZ, or when they immigrated.

However, finding individual records in the Intentions to Marry registers was typically a slow and manual process, usually requiring an in-person visit to Archives NZ's Wellington office (during limited opening hours) and using a handwritten card catalogue index to look up individual names.

Eight years of the registers had been digitised by Archives NZ prior to 2024, but even these digital versions required the use of a manual index and usually examining several pages to locate specific records.

What is the Intentions to Marry Project?

This project aims to transcribe the New Zealand Intentions to Marry registers (from 1855 to 1925) with the assistance of new technology (AI), making the records freely available and easily searchable.

The ITM records have also been cross-referenced with the registered marriages at DIA Births, Deaths and Marriages, where possible (a small fraction of the recorded intentions to marry did not become a registered marriage).

Currently we have almost all records between 1855 and 1898. More registers will be added when the Archives NZ Wellington reading room re-opens in September 2025.

The project is led by Luke Howison, a web developer who made the free genealogical research search tool NZ Ancestor Search Helper and Archway-style Collections Search. There are also some wonderful volunteers assisting with digitising the registers.

Can I volunteer to help?

Yes, you can! You can sign up to correct errors in the transcribed records and match ITMs with registered marriages.

I am also looking for Wellington-based volunteers to help me digitise more years of the registers. I can provide lighting equipment and a 'clicker' (to trigger your phone's camera).

How is the transcription done?

There are several steps to digitising and transcribing the records:

Digitising the registers (taking clean, straight, high-quality photos)
Processing the digitised pages by straightening, cropping and sharpening the images
Transcribing each page with a combination of AI tools
Matching each ITM with a registered marriage when possible
Human verification of the transcribed information

The main LLM (AI) used are the Google Gemini Pro and Flash models, which have excellent 'Vision' capabilities, and a generous free tier.

Archives NZ has released the register years they have digitised (1865-69, 1872, 1874 and 1880) under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

The Intention to Marry registers (up to 1925) are more than 100 years old, so their Crown Copyright has expired, putting them in the public domain. This also applies to any 'mechanical reproductions' (eg, pictures or photocopies) of their content without substantial alteration.

The transcribed records on this website are released under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license, which allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes, while giving credit to the creator (NZ Intentions to Marry Project).