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 193

District of Wellington Quarter ending Jul - Sep

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
64	14 August 1865	Henry Harris Louisa Membrey		Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	22 about 17 years	Cahantance Wellington	about 12 years many years	St. Peter's Church				Certificate not yet issued
65	16th August 1865	Henry Edmund May Murdoch Louisa Rose	Henry Edmund Way Murdoch Louisa Rose 💍 1865/6176	Bachelor Spinster	Runholder	24 22	Wellington Wellington	6 weeks 10 mos Lambton Quay	Scotch Church	704		16th August 1865	The Rev. James Stirling Muir, and others
66	19th August 1865	Thomas Whyte Young Eliza Jane Campbell	Thomas Whyte Young Eliza Jane Campbell 💍 1865/6182	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	33 29	Wellington Cuba Street	2 years 7 years	Private Residence of Miss E. Campbell	706		19th August 1865	The Rev. James Sterling Muir, and others
67	19th August 1865	Charles Richard Curteis Jane Yates Lang	Charles Richard Curties Jane Slater Lang 💍 1865/3923	Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor	35 30	Makara Makara	1 year 6 mos	Private Residence of the Rev. Jas. D. Muir	707		19th August 1865	The Rev. Jas. [UNCLEAR] Muir and others
68	21st August 1865	John Knowles Louisa Emily Lomax	John Knowles Louisa Emily Lomax 💍 1865/4083	Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor	27 minor under 21 years	Wellington Wellington	many years 3 years Thorndon	St. Paul's Church	665	Emily Theresa Lomax, mother	22nd August 1865	The Rev. C. [UNCLEAR] Manuwell and others
69	21st August 1865	Frederick Irhybrew Elizabeth Bamford	Frederick Whybrow Elizabeth Bamford 💍 1865/6098	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	27 21 years & upwards	Wellington Wellington	4 mos 4 mos Hillis Street	St. Peter's Church	675		21st August 1865	The Rev. Arthur Stock Esq.
70	21st August 1865	Joseph Blackey Catherine Jexon Muir	Joseph Blackey Catherine Teresa Mulhern 💍 1865/6083	Bachelor Spinster	Licenced Victualler	24 23	Horokein Valley Horotain Valley	10 years 10 mos Thorndon	St. Paul's Church	669			Certificate not yet issued

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).