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 079

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 December 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
81	3 November 1857	Charles Medhurst Mary Louisa Hastie	[No matching marriage registration has been located]	Widower Spinster	Fencer	47 years 27 years	Nairn Street Nairn Street	17 years 2 years	The private residence of Chas Medhurst in Nairn Street
82	11 November	Henry London Frances Sophia Monk	Henry London Frances Sophia Monk 💍 1858/2302	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	30 years About 18 years	Porirua Porirua	Upwards of 18 years Upwards of 18 years	Wesleyan Chapel in Manners St Wellington	30 December 1857	The Revd Jonathan Innes Ford
83	12 November	David Joseph Bell Eliza Houghton	David Joseph Bell Elizabeth O'Loghlin 💍 1857/1589	Bachelor Spinster	Private 65th Regiment	19 years 18 years	Mount Cook Barracks Willis Street	About 3 years About 18 years	Roman Catholic Chapel in Manners Street	28 November 1857	The Revd J. J. P. O'Reilly, Ford
84	16 November	William Brigin Margaret D'Arcy	William Borgin Margaret Darcy 💍 1857/1583	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	27 years 22 years	Ngauranga Porirua Road	Upwards of 2 years About 12 months	Roman Catholic Chapel in Manners Street	16 November 1857	The Revd J. J. P. O'Reilly, Ford
85	19 November	James McDermott Ann Forrester	James McDermott Ann Forrester 💍 1857/1571	Widower Spinster	Labourer	30 years 26 years	Tinakori Road Tinakori Road	11 years About 12 years	Roman Catholic Cathedral, Brown St, off Manners St	4 December	The Revd Philip Viard, Ford
86	25 November	Edward Hall Caroline Peck	Edward Hall Caroline Peck 💍 1857/1703	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	26 years 15 years	Thorndon Flat With her Father at the Hutt	About 4 years 15 years	Episcopalian Church at the Hutt	15 December	The Revd Thos B. Hutton, 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).