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 079

District of Nelson 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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
1	22 December 1855	Henry Gill Elizabeth Barns	Henry Gill Elizabeth Barnes 💍 1856/1207	Bachelor Spinster	Shearer	24 19	Suburban North Suburban North	Five years Five years	at the residence of Mr H. Gill Farmer	1 January 1856	Rev. Thomas Dickson Nicholson
2	22 February 1856	Charles Edwards Mary Ann Richardson	[No matching marriage registration has been located]	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	25 18	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Two years Five years	Episcopalian Church in Nelson	10 March 1856	Henry Francis Butt
3	26 February 1856	William Gaukrodger Elizabeth Ann Minsett	William Gaukreger Elizabeth Ann Winsett 💍 1856/1759	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	25 20	Waimea South Town of Nelson	Five years Four years	at the residence of Mr Thos Minsett Hardy Street Nelson	5 March 1856	John Poynter Registrar of Marriages Nelson
4	5 March 1856	John William Theodore Lechner Mary Stantone	John William Theodore Lechner Mary Stanton 💍 1856/1878	Bachelor Spinster	Sheep Farmer	29 20	Waimea East Waimea East	Fourteen days Five years	at the Presbyterian Church in Nelson	5 March 1856	Rev. Thomas Dickson Nicholson
5	10 March 1856	George Kinzett the Younger Jemima Hebberd	George Kinzett Jemima Hebberd 💍 1856/1818	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 23	Waimea East Suburban North	Five years Five years	at the office of the Registrar of Marriages in Nelson	10 March 1856	John Poynter Registrar of Marriages Nelson
6	10 March 1856	William Gill Ann Edwards	William Gill Ann Edwards 💍 1856/1821	Widower Spinster	Farmer	44 23	Suburban North Suburban North	Five years Two years	at the residence of Mr W. Gill in Suburban North	10 March 1856	Rev. Thomas Dickson Nicholson
7	19 March 1856	Henry Holland Lydia Hodgkinson	Henry Holland Lydia Hodgkinson 💍 1856/1765	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 22	Waimea South Waimea South	Two years Five years	at the office of the Registrar of marriages, Nelson
8	20 March 1856	John Thomas Berry Giles Gibson	John Thomas Berry Giles Gibson 💍 1856/1762	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	26 21	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Five years Five years	at the office of the Registrar of Marriages Nelson	26 March 1856	John Poynter Registrar of Marriages Nelson
9	26 March 1856	John Fraser Mary Clark	John Fraser Mary Clark 💍 1856/1824	Widower Widow	Sheep Farmer	43 29	Waihopai Town of Nelson	Three years Six months	at the residence of Mr Jno Carter in the Waimea Road Nelson	26 March 1856	Rev. Thomas Dickson Nicholson

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).