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 095

District of AUCKLAND Quarter ending 31 December 1890

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Folio	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
2020	14 November 1890	John Kirk Eliza Sheridan	John Kirk Eliza Henderson 💍 1864/4737	Widower Spinster	Butcher House Keeper	44 39	Sheridan St Auckland North Shore	1 year 7 years	The building used as the Borough of Newton Fire Brigade Station			14 November 1890	Rev. Thomas Kerr
2021	16 November 1890	John Edwards Dixon Guila Gussen	John Edward Dixon Julia Cussen 💍 1864/4220	Bachelor Widow	Carter	27 36	Queen Street West Queen Street	1 year 1 year	St Andrews Presbyterian Church Auckland	894		16 November 1890	Rev David Bruce
2022	16 November 1890	William Forsythe Margaret McGregor	William Cole Margaret Atkinson 💍 1865/7402 William Gray Margaret Annon 💍 1864/6841 William Crowe Margaret Hughes 💍 1864/8169 William Riley Margaret Mattson 💍 1864/3949	Bachelor Spinster	Drum Major	25 18	Otahuhu Papakura	1 year 1 year	The Dwelling house of [UNCLEAR] Papakura	2/18		30 November 1890	Rev. Thomas Karrie
2023	16 November 1890	Joseph Foote Eliza Reed	Joseph Cooke Eliza Reed 💍 1864/4740	Bachelor Spinster	Boatman	40 22	Victoria Street Stokes Point	19 years 10 years	The Church of England Stokes Point North Shore	10/11		16 November 1890	Rev. Thomas Kerr
2024	16 November 1890	John Green Barbara Francis Langley	John Green Barbara Francina Langley 💍 1864/4548 John Brunton Maria Frances Langley 💍 1864/3972	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	22 19	Wakefield Street Auckland Wakefield St Auckland	2 years 2 months	St Marys Church Parnell	157	John Green in the absence of my from the Colony by his authority	19 November 1890	Revd. Benj W Sudley
2025	19 November 1890	Cornelius Healey Mary Fitzgerald	Cornelius Healy Mary Fitzgerald 💍 1864/9047	Bachelor Spinster	Soldier 58th Regt	27 27	Otahuhu Auckland	3 months 18 months	The Roman Catholic Church Otahuhu			19 November 1890	Rev. M. O'Hara
2026	18 November 1890	David May Sarah Kirk	David May Sarah King 💍 1864/4861	Widower Widow	Farmer	50 40	Usually at Maturangi Auckland Auckland	20 years 1 year	St Andrews Presbyterian Church Auckland			22 November 1890	Rev David Bruce

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).