Intentions to Marry, 1861

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840373, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 11 2024

Page 167

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 December 1861

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
76	3 December 1861	William Edwards Matilda Best	William Edwards Matilda Best 💍 1861/1681	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	22 years nearly 19 years	Porirua Porirua	about 18 years	Private Residence of The Rev. Joshua Smith, in Sidney Street	No person in the Colony, authorised to give consent to the marriage of Matilda Best	3 December 1861	The Rev. Joshua Smith and others
77	5 December 1861	William Watson Ellen Partridge	William Watson Ellen Partridge 💍 1861/3909	Bachelor Spinster	Private in H.M. 2nd Battalion of the 14th Regiment	21 years and 6 months 16 years and 6 months	Wellington Wellington	12 months about 10 years	The Wesleyan Chapel, in Manners Street	Eliza Partridge, mother of Ellen Partridge	6 December 1861	The Rev. John Warren and others
78	6 December 1861	Charles Joseph Cotte Mary Ann Gill	Charles Joseph Cottle Mary Ann Gill 💍 1861/3875	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith	20 years 18 years	Wellington Wellington	20 years 18 years	St Paul's Church, Thorndon	Amelia Gill, mother of Mary Ann Gill	21 December 1861	The Rev. Frederick Thatcher and others
79	14 December 1861	Frederick William Shilden Mary Ann Eves	Fredrick H Shilden Mary Ann Eves 💍 1861/3912	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	24 years 18 years	late of Victoria now of Wellington Wellington	6 weeks 5 years	The Wesleyan Chapel in Manners Street	William Henry Eves, father of Mary Ann Eves	14 December 1861	The Rev. John Warren and others
80	27 December 1861	John Lambert Agnes Stuart McEwen	John Lambert Agnes Stuart McEwen 💍 1861/3963	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	28 years about 20 years	Rangitikei, at present Wellington Hutt	5 days 20 years	Private Residence of Mr David Mc Ewen, Hutt	David Mc Ewen, father of Agnes Stuart Mc Ewen	27 December 1861	The Rev. James Duncan 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 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).