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 051

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30 June 1856

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
26	2 April 1856	Robert Ristow Ann Mair	Robert Rixon Ann Mair 💍 1856/1412	Bachelor Spinster	Shoemaker Domestic servant	42 years 32 years	Manners Street, Wellington Lambton Quay, Wellington	6 years 10 months	At the private residence of Mr Michael Quinn in Sutton Place	1856 April 2nd	The Revd. John Moir and others
27	15 April 1856	William Brooked Eliza Baggeley	William Brooks Eliza Baggarley 💍 1856/1358	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer, Private 65th Regt. Nursing maid	23 years 21 years	Te Aro Flat Willis Street	About 3 years 4 months	At the Episcopal Church known as St Peters situate in Willis Street	April 30th	The Revd. Samuel Poole M.A. & others
28	16 April 1856	Frederick Wemmyss Catherine King	Frederick Wemyss Catherine King 💍 1856/1304	Bachelor Spinster	Lieut. 65th Regiment Daughter of the late Jno King, Wellington	24 years 21 years & a few monts	Wellington Wellington Terrace	3 days about 12 years	Presbyterian Church known as St Pauls situate on Thorndon Flat	April 17th	The Revd. Arthur Baker M.A. & others
29	19 April 1856	William Potter Ann Green	William Potter Ann Green 💍 1856/1355	Bachelor Widow	Boot & Shoe maker	27 years 33 years	Lambton Quay Te Aro Flat	6 months Between 6 & 7 years	Episcopalian Church known as St Peters situate in Willis Street	April 19th	The Revd. Samuel Poole M.A. & others
30	21 April 1856	Michael McDonald Ellen Reardon	Michael McDonald Ellen Rearton 💍 1856/1370	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer	Twenty four years Nineteen years	Hutt Road The Depot, Thorndon Quay	Six weeks Six weeks	Roman Catholic Church known as St Marys situate on Thorndon Flat	May 6th	The Revd. J.J.P. O'Reily & others

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).