Intentions to Marry, 1864

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840376, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 062

District of Auckland Quarter ending 30 June 1864

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
1814	20 May 1864	Alexander Mitchelson Ann McLeod formerly McLeod	Alexander Mitchelson Anne McLeod 💍 1864/3978	Widower Widow	Mariner -	52 41	Nelson Street, Auckland Emily Place, Auckland	20 years 5 years	The dwelling house of Capt. Anderson, Stanley Street, Auckland		20 May 1864	Rev D Breech
1815	21 May 1864	Charles Hooker [abbrev. "Chas"] Mary Ann Owen	Charles Hooker Mary Ann Owen 💍 1864/4321	Bachelor Spinster	Painter Servant	22 23	Princes Street, Auckland Victoria Street, Auckland	16 years 10 months	The Wesleyan Chapel in High Street, Auckland		21 May 1864	Rev T. Buddle
1816	21 May 1864	Hender Corneilius Udy Elizabeth Muir	Hender Cornelius Udy Elizabeth Muir 💍 1864/9112	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer -	28 19	Eden Grove Near Auckland Papatoetoe	4 years From Birth	The dwelling house of Mr Alexander Muir, Woodside Farm, Papatoetoe	Alexander Muir, Father	21 May 1864	Rev H Lawry
1817	23 May 1864	Franz Schrader Alice Henderson	Franz Schrader Alice Henderson 💍 1864/8920	Bachelor Spinster	Compositor -	30 20	Wyndham Street, Auckland Victoria Street, Auckland	2 years 2 years	St. Matthew's Church, Auckland		23 May 1864	Rev D Jones
1818	23 May 1864	Charles Meacham Mary Fahey	Charles Meacham Mary Fahey 💍 1864/9311	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk -	30 21	Barrack Street, Auckland Grafton Road, Auckland	1 month 3 years	St. Paul's Church, Auckland, and St. Patrick's Church, Auckland		23 May 1864	Rev J F Lloyd and Very Rev J Macdonald
1819	23 May 1864	Benjamine Buck Jane Collett formerly Humphries	Benjamin Buck Jane Collett 💍 1864/4665	Bachelor Widow	Carter -	23 27	Wakefield Street, Auckland Wakefield Street, Auckland	8 months 2 years	The Primitive Methodist Church, Edwardes Street, Auckland		23 May 1864	Rev J. Long

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).