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 186

District of Wellington Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
24	1 April 1865	John Simmons Mary Ann Stratford	John Simmonds Mary Ann Stratford 💍 1865/4355	Bachelor Widow	Storeman	38 43	Wellington Wellington	3 years 3 years	Private Residence of John Simmons and others			17 April 1865	The Rev. Isaac Harding, and others
25	6 April 1865	William Henry Whyte Cate Maria Gowen	William Henry Whyte Kate Maria Gawen 💍 1865/6134	Bachelor Spinster	Master Mariner	about 24 21	Wellington Wellington	3 days 3 days	Roman Catholic Chapel,	687		6 April 1865	The Rev. J. P. P. Reilly, and others
26	10 April 1865	Edmund George Murry Corlet Mary Roberts	Edmund G M Corlet Mary Roberts 💍 1865/6287	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	23 19	Vaita Vaita	1 year about 7 years	Private Residence of Thomas Roberts	745	Thomas Roberts, Father	10 April 1865	The Rev. William James Watkin, and others
26A	10 April 1865	Michael Billows Mary Ann Davenport	Michael Billows Mary Ann Devenport 💍 1865/6092	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	27 17	Pelorus Sound, at present Wellington Wellington	3 days about 4 years	St. Peter's Church	693	Mary Donaldson, mother	11 April 1865	The Rev. Arthur Stock, and others
27	11 April 1865	Joseph Smith Jane Watson Smith	Joseph Smith Joan Watson Smith 💍 1865/4358	Bachelor Spinster	Chemist	30 25	Tinakori Road Tinakori Road	8 months 3 months	Private Residence of Joseph Smith			26 April 1865	The Rev. Isaac Harding, and others
28	11 April 1865	John Fitzgerald Fanny Phelin	John Fitzgerald Fanny Phelan 💍 1866/6499	Bachelor Widow	Gardener Laundress	32 31	Wellington Wellington	2 years 7 years	Roman Catholic Chapel, Manners Street				Certificate not yet issued
29	12 April 1865	William Shepherd Louisa Broucher	William Shepherd Louisa Croucher 💍 1865/3983 William Shepherd Mary Dogherty 💍 1865/5528	Bachelor Spinster	Miller	24 26	Wellington Wellington	9 mos. about 4 years	Private Residence of John Broucher	737		12 April 1865	The Rev. William Mill Bell, and others

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).