1857 Intentions to Marry

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840369, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 13 2024

Page 070

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30th June 1857

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	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
44	May 4th 1857	Charles Quidby Elizabeth Payne	Charles Cudby Elizabeth Payne 💍 1857/1721	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer Daughter of Mrs Payne	21 years 4 months 20 years	Upper Hutt Upper Hutt	7 days 7 days	Roman Catholic Chapel, Hutt		May 22nd 1857	The Revd. J. Forest, Dors
45	May 5th 1857	William Sandom Agnes Galloway	William Sansom Agnes Galloway 💍 1857/1718	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer	23 years 17 years	Hutt Hutt	About 15 years About 17 years	Free Church of Scotland, Hutt Road		May 18th 1857	The Revd. William Kirton, Ford
46	May 21st 1857	George Faulkner Ann Elizabeth Tattle	George Faulknor Anne Elizabeth Tattle 💍 1857/1554	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	25 years 18 years	Wellington With her mother in Wellington	About 3 years Upwards of 10 years	Episcopalian Church known as "St Pauls" Willis Street		May 26th 1857	Arthur Stock, B.A. Dors
47	May 22nd 1857	Thomas Hayward Mary Ann Jolley	Thomas Heyward Mary Anne Jolley 💍 1857/1664	Bachelor Spinster	Stock Keeper	31 years 22 years	"Te Iraiti" Hutt	one month About 12 months	Episcopalian Church known as "St James" in the Hutt		May 22nd 1857	The Revd. John Biddulph, Hutton, Ford
48	May 23rd 1857	Thomas Crompton, Junior Elizabeth Mary Hodder	Thomas Kempton Elizabeth Mary Hodder 💍 1857/1667	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	Upwards of 20 years 18 years	Mairiniu at present "Pahurataki"	4 days About 16 years	"The Golden Fleece", Pahurataki	With her Parents at the "Pahurataki"	May 23rd 1857	The Revd. John Biddulph, Hutton, Ford
49	May 23rd 1857	"Te Rou" "Keita Tawa"	NR Te Rau Keita Tawa 💍 1857/1640	Bachelor Widow	An Aboriginal Native An Aboriginal Native woman	Upwards of 21 years Upwards of 21 years	Wainui Wainui	Several years Several years	Office of the Registrar of Marriages in Wellington		23 May 1857	The Registrar of Marriages for the District of Wellington, Ford

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).