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 052

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30th June 1856

Continuation of the District of Wellington

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
31	April 21	Martin Greathead Adelaide Squibb	Martin Greathead Adelaide Squibb 💍 1856/1310	Bachelor Spinster	Shoemaker	Thirty one years Twenty five years	Mulgrave Street Manners Street	10 months Upwards of 12 years	Episcopalian Church known as St Paul's situate on Thorndon Flat	1856 May 6th	The Revd. Arthur Baker M.A. & others
32		John Westgarth Mary Elizabeth Jesson	John Westgarth Mary Elizabeth Tiffen 💍 1856/1307	Bachelor Spinster	Master Mariner	Twenty Seven years Twenty nine years	Wellington Hotel, Lambton Quay Same place	5 days 5 days	Episcopalian Church known as St Paul's situate on Thorndon Flat	April 21st	The Revd. Arthur Baker M.A. & others
33		Stephen Cooper Ann Eliza Smith	Stephen Cooper Ann Eliza Smith 💍 1856/1316	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	28 years About 28 years	Thorndon Flat Wellington Terrace	2 1/2 years About 7 months	Episcopalian Church known as St Paul's situate on Thorndon Flat	June 11th	The Revd. Arthur Baker M.A. & others
34		Henry Morton Blandford Julia Carty	Henry Marton Blanford Julia Mary Carty 💍 1856/1379	Bachelor Spinster	Color Sergeant 65th Regiment Daughter of Chas. Carrty	29 years 18 years	Mount Cook Barracks With her Father in Wellington	2 months Upwards of 7 years	Roman Catholic Chapel known as St Mary's situate at Te Aro in Wellington	May 5th	The Revd. S. P. O'Reilly & others
35		John Rollo Elizabeth Mary Ann McMeekan	John Rolls Elizabeth Mary Ann McMilne 💍 1856/2026	Widower Spinster	Carpenter Domestic Servant	24 years 20 years	Makara Road Hawkestone Street	Upwards of 12 months About 10 months	Private residence of The Revd. Mr. Kirton, Wellington Terrace	May 10th	The Revd. Mr. Kirton & 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).