Intentions to Marry, 1863

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840375, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 4 2024

Page 285

District of Lyttelton Quarter ending 30 September 1863

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
224	6 July 1863	Richard Bradfield Elizabeth Collier	No corresponding marriage registration located.	Bachelor Spinster	Miller	24 24	London Street Canterbury Street	15 months 5 years	Wesleyan Chapel, Lyttelton		6 July	Rev. Joseph J. Shaw
225	25 July 1863	William Elias Norrish Mary Ann Webb	Duplicate entry. See 25 above. Marriage not found.	Bachelor Spinster		26 20	Hawkeswood Road Brenchley Farm	3 years 3 years	Wesleyan Chapel, Lyttelton	Samuel Webb, Father of Mary Ann Webb	25 July	Rev Joseph T Shaw
227	10 August 1863	John Death Mary Jane Fooks	John Death Mary Jane Fooks 💍 1863/6254	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk ...... Customs	21 25	Oxford Street, Lyttelton Sumner road neasr Lyttelton	1 year 2 years	Church of the Holy Trinity, Lyttelton		29 August	Rev Francis Knowles
228	13 August 1863	William Todd Elizabeth Spiller	William Todd Elizabeth Spiller 💍 1863/6257	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner Domestic Servant	28 18	Lyttelton Lyttelton	7 m. 7 m.	Church of the Holy Trinity		29 August	Rev Francis Knowles
229	14 Aug 1863	Marmaduke Weastell Georgina Wilburn	Marmaduke Weastell Georgina Wilburn 💍 1863/6260	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter General servant	21 19	St David's St, Lyttelton St David's St, Lyttelton	4 y. 3 y.	Church of the Holy Trinity, Lyttelton	31 Aug 1863		Rev Francis Knowles
230	31 August 1863	George Agar Catherine Carroll	George Agar Catharine Carroll 💍 1863/3718	Bachelor Spinster	Waterman Domestic Servant	25 22	London Street Union Bank of Australia, Lyttelton	5 years 8 years	House of Mrs Carroll, Exeter St.		31 August	Rev. Francis Knowles
231	27 August 1863	William Salt Mary Merralls	No corresponding marriage registration found.	Bachelor Spinster	Bricklayer	24 21	Salts Gully Dampier's Bay	12 years about 12 months	House of Mr L.... man[?], Dampier's Bay		29 August	Rev. Joseph J. Shaw

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).