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 063

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 March 1857

Continuation on 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
5	31 January 1857	John Wood Eleanor Palmer	John Wood Eleanor Palmer 💍 1857/1008	Bachelor Spinster	Agriculturalist	24 years 26 years	Wainuiopai at present Hamilton Quay	4 days 11 days	Office of the Registrar of Marriages at Wellington		January 31st 1857	John Elisha Smith, the Registrar of Marriages for the District of Wellington
6	5 February 1857	John Wilson Marie Smith	John Wilson Maria Castle 💍 1857/1592	Widower Spinster	Mariner	33 years 18 years	Wellington With her Father on Aurora Terrace Wellington	7 months Upwards to 6 months	House Private residence of The Revd Armstrong in Sydney Street Wellington	Daughter of Maria Smith of Wellington	February 5th 1857	The Revd Harry Gurn Todd
7	7 February 1857	Thomas Mountain Ellen Burdett	Thomas John Mountain Ellen Burdett 💍 1857/3	Bachelor Widow	Brickkeeper	28 years 28 years	Taranaki Place Wellington Ghuznee Street	Upwards of 2 years Upwards of 6 years	Episcopalian Church known as St Peters Situate in Willis Street	Relict of Samuel Burdett decd	February 7th 1857	The Revd Arthur Stock fords
8	9 February 1857	Richard Millner Reliza Baker	Richard Millner Eliza Baker 💍 1857/4	Widower Widow	Carter	About 50 years 57 years	Te Aro Flat Evans Bay Road	17 years Upwards of 17 years	Episcopalian Church Situate in Willis Street known as St Peters	Relict of John Thos Townsend Baker, decd	February 24th 1857	The Revd Arthur Stock Todd
9	10 February 1857	William Jenkins Margaret Carmont	William Jenkins Margaret Carmont 💍 1857/1679	Widower Spinster	Stockholder	38 years 27 years	"Uruhi" near Waikanae Wellington	About 8 years About 5 years	Roman Catholic Church known as St Marys Situate on Thorndon		February 10th 1857	The Right Revd Lord Bishop Viard
10	14 February 1857	Arthur Edward Bowden Marie Louise Tunzelmann Von Adlersphig	"Mother subsequently withdrawn - see 1857/1540 marriage to Charles James Gully"	Bachelor Spinster	Gentleman	20 years 21 years 1 month	Lambton Quay Lambton Quay	14 days 14 days	Episcopalian Church known as St Paul's Situate at Thorndon	Mother subsequently withdrawn

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).