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 176

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30 September 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
51	20 July 1861	Joseph Goapey Holdsworth Eliza Mary Smith	Joseph Godfrey Holdsworth Eliza Mary Smith 💍 1861/3969	Widower Spinster	Paymaster of Roads	38 19	Wellington Wellington	8 years 3 weeks	At the Private Residence of Mr Benjamin Smith, in Cuba Street	Benjamin Smith, father of Eliza Mary Smith	1 August 1861	The Rev. H.W. Scott, and others.
52	24 July 1861	Edward Bull Sarah Dixon	Edward Bull Sarah Dixon 💍 1861/3834 Joseph Bull Martha Dixon 💍 1861/3839	Bachelor Spinster	Painter	33 18	Wellington Wellington	3 1/2 years 18 years	St. Peter's Church in Willis Street	Joseph Dixon, father of Sarah Dixon	24 July 1861	The Rev. Arthur Stock, and others.
53	25 July 1861	George Barton Elizabeth Johnson	George Bolton Elizabeth Johnson 💍 1861/2640	Bachelor Spinster	Bricklayer	27 22	Wellington Wellington	21 years 16 years	In the Private Residence of Mr John Johnson on Lambton Quay		25 July 1861	The Rev. William Kiston, and others.
54	10 August 1861	John Clarke Elizabeth Brown	John Clarke Elizabeth Brown 💍 1861/3927	Bachelor Widow	Stockman Relict of Mr Brown, decd	35 35	Pahau, Manawatu Dist. at present residing in Wellington Wellington	3 weeks 8 years	The Roman Catholic Chapel known as St. Mary's situate at Shandun		10 August 1861	The Right Rev. @ Viard, and others.
55	13 August 1861	John Ragin Christiana Gilligan	John Hagin Christina Gilligan 💍 1861/2779	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer	38 33	Upper Hutt Upper Hutt	7 years 7 years	The Roman Catholic Chapel at the Hutt
56	14 August 1861	Francis Buck Hannah Lawson	Francis Buck Hannah Lawson 💍 1861/2646	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	26 21 years and 1 month	Wellington Wellington	3 years 4 years	The Private Residence of The Rev. William Kiston on Wellington Terrace		14 August 1861	The Rev. William Kiston, 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).