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 069

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	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
2289	10 May 1865	George Rex Ann Gifford	George Rix Ann Clifford 💍 1865/5282	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	54 40	Kaukapakapa Kaukapakapa	25 years 1	House of Mr Geo. Rex Kaukapakapa		10 May 1865	Rev Geo Kerr
2290	10 May 1865	Charles Peterson Esther Sarah Bartlett	Charles Peterson Esther Sarah Bartlett 💍 1865/5660	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	34 23	Onehunga Shortland Street Auckland	3 days 2	House of Mr Thompson Onehunga		10 May 1865	Rev R. Lairdley
2291	10 May 1865	Thomas Mann Annie Eliza Watson	Thomas Mann Annie Eliza Watson 💍 1865/5573	Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	26 19	Wakefield Street Auckland Parnell	6 years 14 years	House of Mr Thos Mann Baker Street Auckland	Ann Watson mother	10 May 1865	Rev Alex Macdonald
2292	10 May 1865	Robert John Lyons Margaret French	Robt John Lyons Margaret Spence 💍 1865/4985	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	33 26	Queen Street Auckland Edwardes Street Auckland	10 years 5 yrs	House of Mr Davidson Barracks Auckland		10 May 1865	Rev Jas Hill
2293	11 May 1865	William Willmott Margaret Eliza Johnston	William Wilmott Wilthew Margaret Eliza Johnson 💍 1865/4784	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	24 22	Seafield Street Auckland Seafield Street Auckland	2 weeks 18 mths	House of Thomas Johnston Seafield Street Freemans Bay		11 May 1865	Rev Thos Hamer
2294	11 May 1865	James Forsman Margaret Roycroft	James Forssman Margaret Rycroft 💍 1865/5576	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Servant	25 23	Newton Mrs Sales Boarding House Newton	3 1/2 years from birth	House of Mr Rusden Newton		11 May 1865	Rev A Macdonald

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).