1865 Intentions to Marry

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840377, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 039

District of Auckland Quarter ending Jan - Dec

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
2108	4 January 1865	William Beswick Jessie Keane	William Beswick Jessie Keane 💍 1865/4757	Bachelor Spinster	Gardener	20 18	Chapel Street Auckland Chapel Street Auckland	2½ years since birth	The dwelling house of Mr Keane in Chapel Street Auckland	7	Bernard Keane, father	4 January 1865
2109	9 January 1865	Henry Edward Warcup Emily Anderson	Henry Edward Warcup Emily Anderson 💍 1865/4508	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker Servant	25 24	Karangahape Road Wellington Street	6 months 3 weeks	St Matthews Church Auckland	9		9 January 1865	Rev. David Jones
2110	9 January 1865	Samuel McCallum Ann Ferguson Alexander	Samuel McCallum Ann Ferguson Alexander 💍 1865/4892	Bachelor Spinster	Currier	28 14	Onehunga Onehunga	6 weeks 10 mths	House of Rev. George Brown Onehunga	75	J. Alexander, her father	9 January 1865	Rev. George Brown
2111	10 January 1865	Edward Walter Suckey Ann Jane Russell	Edward Walter Puckey Ann Jane Russell 💍 1865/4760	Bachelor Spinster	Government Interpreter	24 19	Auckland Auckland	18 months from birth	House of John Russell Upper Queen Street Auckland	10	John Russell, father	10 January 1865	Rev. W. H. Lawry
2112	10 January 1865	William McKerras Eliza Johnson	William McKenas Eliza Johnson 💍 1865/5414	Widower Spinster	Carpenter	42 30	Remuera Newmarket	8 months 5 years	House of Rev Mr Bobley Auckland	77		January 1865
2113	10 January 1865	George Willsbury S. Ann Woolfield	George Didsbury Fanny Woolfield 💍 1865/4037	Bachelor Spinster	Printer	26 24	Allen Road Auckland Karamelon Park near Otahuhu	20 years 2	St Johns Church East Tamaki	8		January 1865	Rev. Mr Leish

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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Attribution: This image was digitised by Archives NZ Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga and is republished here under CC BY. It has been cropped and rotated for convenience.

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).