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 130

District of Nelson Quarter ending Thirty first of December 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
60	18 December 1858	Henry Allport Ann Smith	Henry Allport Ann Smith 💍 1859/2183	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	26 years 16 years	Stoke Richmond	5 years 5 years	at the residence of Benjamin Lusty farmer Richmond	Ellen Lusty, mother	20 December 1858	Rev. Decimus Dolamore
61	23 December 1858	Frederick Brooks Anna Maria Yorke	Frederick Brooks Anna Maria York 💍 1858/1891	Bachelor Spinster	Warehouseman	29 years 26 years	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	4 years 18 months	at the manse of the Presbyterian Church Nelson		23 December 1858	Rev. Patrick Calder
62	23 December 1858	John Woodhouse Elizabeth Walker	John Woodhouse Elizabeth Walker 💍 1858/1819	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	28 years 27 years	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	16 years 3 weeks	at the Wesleyan Chapel in Hardy St. Nelson		23 December 1858	Rev. John Warren
63	29 December 1858	William Jenkin Maria Bunn	William Jenkins Maria Bunn 💍 1858/1888	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	25 years 19 years	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	3 days 2 months	at the manse of the Presbyterian Church in Nelson	Elizabeth Moffett, mother	29 December 1858	Rev. Patrick Calder
64	30 December 1858	Thomas Turrell Eliza Jackson	Thos Turrell Eliza Jackson 💍 1859/2171	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker	27 years 22 years	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	12 months 16 years	at the Wesleyan Chapel in Hardy St Nelson		30 December 1858	Rev. John Warren
65	30 December 1858	Thomas Hargreaves Hannah Fletcher	Thomas Hargreaves Hannah Fletcher 💍 1859/2203	Bachelor Spinster	Gold digger	31 years 20 years	Town of Nelson Town of Nelson	4 days 9 months	at the Presbyterian Church in Nelson	Declaration that both parents were dead and that no person in New Zealand had authority to consent to marriage	30 December 1858	Rev. Patrick Calder

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).