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 099

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30 September 1858

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
151	23 August 1858	Richard Okey Jane Seymour	Certificate not yet issued	Bachelor Widow	Ironmoulder	24 years 25 years	Wellington Wellington	About 15 months About 15 months	Primitive Methodist Chapel in Sydney St			Right Revd Bishop Viard
152	31 August 1858	Thomas Beeston Harriett Wouldom	Certificate not yet issued	Bachelor Spinster	Private in 75th Regt	28 years 17 years	Wellington Wellington	10 years 10 years	Roman Catholic Chapel in Manners St			Right Revd Bishop Viard
153	8 September 1858	Charles Griffin Catherine Dunn	Charles Griffin Catherine Dunn 💍 1858/2490	Bachelor Spinster	Navi Draper	27 years 21 years	Lambton Quay Lambton Quay	14 weeks 5 days	At the Roman Catholic Chapel known as St Marys in Wellington		September 1858	Right Revd Bishop Viard
154	10 September 1858	Thomas Stickels Mary Kenny	Thomas Stickles Mary Kenny 💍 1858/2389	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	26 years 21 years	Porirua Molesworth St	21 years upwards of 1 year	Residence of Mrs Kenny in Molesworth St		September 25th 1858	Revd J. Smith
155	10 September 1858	Homer Laurenson Ellen Goodwin	Hermon Laurenson Ellen Goodwin 💍 1858/2466	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	25 years 25 years	Wellington Hutt	8.5 years 2.5 years	Episcopalian Church in Wales St known as "St Peters"		September 1858	Revd A Stock B.A.
156	13 September 1858	James Stratford Elizabeth Hey	James Stratford Elizabeth Key 💍 1858/2463	Bachelor Spinster	Shoemaker	26 years 21 years	Wellington Wellington	2.5 years 2.5 years	Episcopalian Church in Willis St known as St Peters		September 13th 1858	Revd A Stock B.A.
157	13 September 1858	Thomas Poat Diana Death	Thomas Poad Diana Death 💍 1858/2386	Widower Spinster	Smith & Farrier	47 years 47 years	Hutt Hutt	19 years 9 months	Office of Registrar of Marriages in Wellington		September 1858	J. E. Smith, Registrar of Marriages at Wellington
158	24 September 1858	Charles Ingle Louisa Mary Ann [UNCLEAR] Borch	Charles Ingle Louisa Mary Ann Birch 💍 1858/2416	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	30 years 19 years	Wellington Wellington	5 months 5 months	Episcopalian Church known as St Pauls in Wellington	George Borch, Father	September 1858	Revd R. B. Paul

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).