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 095

District of [UNCLEAR] Quarter ending 31 March 1857

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
12	14 March 1857	Benjamin Gill Jane White	"Certificate not issued. Name of female given in error vide fresh notice N 20"	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	25 22	Suburban North Suburban North	Fourteen days One month	at the residence of Mr Benj. Gill		Rev. T. D. Nicholson
13	17 March 1857	Henry Arthur Broughton Ellen Simpson	Henry Arthur Broughton Ellen Simpson 💍 1857/2345	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	32 18	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Three weeks Three weeks	at the Presbyterian Church in Nelson	17 March 1857	Rev. H. F. Butt
14	17 March 1857	William Hooper Harriett Astle	William Hooper Harriet Astle 💍 1857/1769	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	25 20	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Two years Five years	at the Protestant Episcopalian Church in Nelson
15	21 March 1857	James Balfour Mary Ashton Smith	James Balfour Wemyss Mary Ashton Smith 💍 1857/2302	Bachelor Widow	Sheep Farmer	28 28	Waimea Waimea	Twelve months Twelve months	at the Presbyterian Church in Nelson	21 March 1857	Rev. T. D. Nicholson
20	30 March 1857	Benjamin Gill Jane Day	Benjamin Gill Jane Day 💍 1857/2342	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	25 22	Suburban North Suburban North	Fourteen days One month	at the residence of Mr. Gill in Suburban North	30 March 1857	T. D. Nicholson
116	23 March 1857	John Frederick Henry Lange Louisa Cathrina Collis	John Frederick Henry Lange Louise Cathrine Colst 💍 1857/2226	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	25 27	Waimea East Waimea East	Six weeks Six weeks	at the residence of Mr Henry Lange
117	23 March 1857	Frederick Lyons Matilda Gleeson	Frederick Lyon Matilda Gleeson 💍 1857/1775	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	24 19	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Six weeks Six weeks	at the Protestant Episcopalian Church in Nelson
118	26 March 1857	John O'Connor Bridget Leahy	John O'Connor Bridget Leahy 💍 1857/1971	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	25 [UNCLEAR]	Waimea West Waimea West	Three years Two years	at the Catholic Chapel in Waimea West
519	27 March 1857	William Wright Ellen Watts	William Wright Ellen Watts 💍 1857/1772	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	26 24	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	Four months Eighteen months	at the Protestant Episcopalian Church in Nelson	27 March 1857	Rev. H. F. Butt

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).