Intentions to Marry, 1859

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840371, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 12 2024

Page 051

District of Auckland Quarter ending 30 September 1859

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
643	12 September 1859	Andrew Otto Mary Ann Isabel Clark	Andrew Otto Mary Ann Isabel Clark 💍 1859/2394	Bachelor Spinster	Grocer	24 22	Wyndham Street Union Street, Auckland	15 years 2 years	The dwelling house of Edw. Bartley Union St. Auckland		12 September 1859	Rev. Alex. Macdonald
644	13 September 1859	John Minipress Mary Anne Bennelly	John Winepress Mary Anne Donnelly 💍 1859/1400	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	24 15	Howick Howick	4 years 10 years	Roman Catholic Church, Howick	Mary Ann Bennelly, mother
645	15 September 1859	Henry William Walker Mary Anne Ogden	Henry William Walker Mary Ann Ogden 💍 1859/2262	Bachelor Spinster	Woolstapler	41 31	Onehunga Onehunga	5 weeks 5 weeks	St. Matthews Church, Auckland
646	17 September 1859	John Gorrie Elizabeth Thomson Stewart	[No matching marriage found for this couple] Folio 59/33	Bachelor Spinster	Teacher	39 25	Kyber Pass Road Pitt Street, Auckland	14 years 12 months	The dwelling house of Mr. Gorrie, Pitt Street, Auckland		17 September 1859	Rev. David Bruce
647	27 September 1859	William Henry Williams Helen Forbes	William Henry Williams Helen Forbes 💍 1859/2490	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	19 1/2 21 1/2	Onehunga Onehunga	7 years 15 years	St. Peters Church, Onehunga	Eliza Williams, mother	27 September 1859	Rev. A. G. Purchas
648	28 September 1859	Laurence Moncrieff Sarah Patison	Lawrence Moncrieff Sarah Paterson 💍 1859/2349	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	27 19	Parnell Parnell	8 years 7 years	St. Pauls Church, Auckland	No person is having authority	28 September 1859	Rev. J. F. Lloyd

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).