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 044

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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
2138	28 January 1865	Peter Larsson Charlotte Sampson	Peter Larson Charlotte Simpson 💍 1865/4895	Bachelor Spinster	Painter Dressmaker	30 30	Onehunga Onehunga	8 weeks 14 weeks	Presbyterian Church Onehunga	28 January 1865	Rev. G. Brown
2139	24 January 1865	William Wilkinson Mary Jane Whisker	William Wilkinson Mary Jane Whisker 💍 1865/4505	Bachelor Spinster	Model Maker	21 22	Edwards Street Auckland Newmarket	1 1/2 yrs 14 years	St Matthews Church	24 January 1865	Rev. David Jones
2140	27 January 1865	Joseph McAthey Jane Sherman	Joseph McCaghey Jane Sherwan 💍 1865/4511	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	22 28	Chapel Street Auckland Chapel Street Auckland	6 weeks 6 weeks	St Matthews Church	11 February 1865	Rev. David Jones
2141	24 January 1865	Frederick M Dowell Charlotte Stenton	Frederick McDowell Charlotte Steenson 💍 1865/4190	Bachelor Spinster	Shipwright	23 18	Wyndham St Auckland Official Bay Auckland	4 mths 3 years	St Andrews Presbyterian Church Auckland	24 January 1865	Rev. David Bruce
2142	24 January 1865	Lachlan McIntosh Annie Campbell	Lauclan McIntyre Annie Campbell 💍 1865/4958	Bachelor Spinster	Painter	28 16	Drake Street Freemans Bay Drake Street Freemans Bay	2 mths 1 week	Rev. James Kellys House Auckland	24 January 1865	Rev. James Kelly
2143	24 January 1865	John Carrel Ann McShee		Bachelor Widow	Lawyer	56 30	Suburb Suburb	15 years 6 mths	St Patricks Roman Catholic Church	24 January 1865	Very Rev. Walter McDonald

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).