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 099

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
2439	12 September 1865	David Evans Elizabeth Millow	David Evans Elizabeth Millsom 💍 1865/4685	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	24 25	Auckland Auckland	18 months 12 years	the Office of Registrar of marriages			12 September 1865	Registrar of Marriages
2440	12 September 1865	Charles Samuel Wright Fanny Morgan Gale	Charles Samuel Wright Fanny Morgan Hale 💍 1865/4625	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Dressmaker	22 19	Cook Street Auckland Vincent Street Auckland	20 years 8 Days	St Matthews Church	74	H. M. Laughlan mother	24 September 1865	Rev. E. N. Bree
2441	13 September 1865	John Taylor Charlotte Wright	John Taylor Charlotte Wright 💍 1865/4628	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Bar maid	24 18	Pitt Street Auckland Cook Street Auckland	18 mths from birth	St Matthews Church	74	Wm Wright father	24 September 1865	Rev. E. N. Bree
2442	13 September 1865	Joseph Joge Esther Woodrow	Joseph Jago Esther Meadson 💍 1865/5030	Widower Spinster	Carpenter	31 26	Vincent Street Auckland do	1 year	House of Mrs Jones Vincent Street Auckland			13 September 1865	Rev. Jas Hill
2443	13 September 1865	Edwin Bennett Sarah Bosley	Edwin Bennett Sarah Bosley 💍 1865/5432	Bachelor Spinster	Gardener Dressmaker	26 26	Grafton Road Auckland do	3 yrs 3 weeks	House of Mr Joseph Rogers Grafton Road			30 September 1865	Rev. Thos Bosley
2444	14 September 1865	Robert Fallows Eliza Streets formerly Ware		Bachelor Spinster	Soldier Servant	25 30	Auckland Grafton Road Auckland	5 years 3	St Pauls Church			14 September 1865	Rev. J. F. Lloyd

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).