Intentions to Marry, 1858

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840370, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

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

Page 093

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30th of June 1858

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
34	May 14th 1858	John Burke Mary Ann Rogers Sheehan	John Burke Mary Anne Rogers Sheehan 💍 1858/2377	Bachelor Spinster	Private in the 65th Regt.	28 years 21 years	Mount Cook Barracks Wellington	4 years about 6 months	At the Roman Catholic Chapel Known as St Mary's in Wellington	May 14th 1858	The Revd J. J. P. O'Reilly and others
35	May 15th 1858	Richard Andrew Marshall Mary Gough	Richard H Marshall Bridget Mary Gough 💍 1858/2374	Bachelor Spinster	Private 65th Regiment	22 years 19 years	Wellington Wellington	9 years 18 years	Roman Catholic Chapel in Manners St known as St Mary's	May 15th 1858	The Revd J. J. P. O'Reilly and others
36	May 17th 1858	John Hurst Annie Jeffs	Certificate not yet issued	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	33 years 16 years	Wellington Wellington	11 years 10 years	In the Episcopalian Church in Willis St Known as St Peter's		[UNCLEAR]
37	May 19th 1858	James Clemmet Jane Bruce	James Clemmet Jane Bruce 💍 1858/2285	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	26 years 20 years	Hutt Wellington	6 months 6 months	Episcopalian Church, in Wellington known as St Pauls	June 1st 1858	The Revd A Baker M.A. and others
38	May 19th 1858	David Hughey Elizabeth Port	David Hughey Elizabeth Port 💍 1858/2323	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	29 years 24 years	Taita Wellington	19 years about 1 year	The private residence of John Campbell Karori	June 3rd 1858	The Revd W. Kirton and others
39	May 28th 1858	Frankland Valentine Eliza Tolhurst	Frankland Valentine Eliza Tolhurst 💍 1858/2326	Bachelor Spinster	Private in the Police	20 years & 11 months 16 years	Hutt Wellington	14 months about 10 years	At the private residence of the Revd W. Kirton Wellington Terrace	June 12th 1858	The Revd W. Kirton and 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 1894. More registers will be added as the project continues.

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).