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 188

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
37	5 May 1865	William Leslie Dorset Mary Emily Mathews	William Leslie Dorset Mary Emily Matthews 💍 1865/6161	Bachelor Spinster	Sheep Farmer	22 21	Wellington Wellington	about 5 weeks upwards of 4 mos.	Private Residence of the Rev. D. Muir, and others. Ghuznee Street	699		5 May 1865	The Rev. James Stirling Muir, and others
38	9 May 1865	Henry Dryden Mary Ann Eagle	Henry Dryden Mary Ann Eagle 💍 1865/6164	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	24 22	Wellington Wellington	4 mos. about 7 years	Private Residence of Henry Dryden, Molesworth St.	700		May 9th 1865	The Rev. James Stirling Muir, and others
39	12 May 1865	Henry Dryden Mary Ann Eagle	Henry Dryden Mary Ann Eagle 💍 1865/6164	Widower Spinster		22
40	16 May 1865	William John Burrows Mary Jane Sharp	William John Burrows Mary Jane Sharp 💍 1865/6212	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	28 20	Wellington Wellington	6 days 9 months	Residence of the Rev. John Moir, Wellington	718	No person resident within the Colony authorized by law, to give consent to the marriage of Mary Jane Sharp.	16 May 1865	The Rev. John Moir, and others
41	17 May 1865	Patrick Browning Margaret Bennard	Patrick Brannigan Margaret Bernard 💍 1865/3939	Bachelor Spinster	Stockholder	35 18	Wellington Wellington	14 days 18 years	Roman Catholic Chapel, Manners Street	689	William Bennard, Father	17 May 1865	The Rev. W. P. C. Reilly, and others
42	18 May 1865	Thomas Sparks Mary Ann Robinson	Thomas Sparks Mary Ann Robinson 💍 1865/6314	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	26 17	Stokes Valley Stokes Valley	2 years 5 years	Primitive Methodist Chapel, Sydney Street	755	William Robinson, Father	5 June 1865	The Rev. Charles Waters, and others.
43	19 May 1865	William Fitchett Annie Louisa Hawkins	William Fitchett Louisa Annie Hawkins 💍 1865/6167	Bachelor Spinster		28 23	Ohiro Wellington	about 16 years many years	Residence of George Hawkins Esqr., Willis Street

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).