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 200

District of Wellington Quarter ending Oct - 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
103	21 November 1865	John Griffin Stewart Frances Ann Carkeek	John Tiffin Stewart Frances Ann Carkeck 💍 1865/6116	Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor	38 25	Wellington Wellington	4 years upwards 5 years upwards	St. Peter's & c	681		21 November 1865	The Rev. Arthur Stock, B.A.
104	22 November 1865	Thomas Drekary Elizabeth Payne	Thomas Dockary Elizabeth Payne 💍 1865/6323	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	23 years 16 years	Wellington Wellington	about 21 years about 8 years	Wesleyan Chapel Manner Street	760	William Payne, Father	24 November 1865	The Rev. Isaac Harding
105	2 December 1865	Henry Cattermole Clara Rodgers	Henry Cattermole Clara Rogers 💍 1865/6254	Bachelor Widow	Butcher	about 33 years about 34 years	Wellington Wellington	about 8 mos. 4 mos	Residence of the said Clara Rodgers, Taranaki Place	733		2 December 1865	The Rev. Isaac Harding
106	5 December 1865	Ebenezer Short Caroline Baker	Ebenezer Short Caroline Baker 💍 1865/6329	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	about 20 years 22 years	Ohiro Karori	many years many years	Residence of George Baker, Karori	762	James Short, Father	12 December 1865	The Rev. Charles Gaters
107	6 December 1865	Job Short Janet Aim	Job Short Janet Sim 💍 1865/6326	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	30 years 26 years	Ohiro Ohiro	many years 4 mos.	Residence of James Short, Ohiro	761		6 December 1865	The Rev. Charles Gaters
108	12 December 1865	George Friend Matilda Synes	George Friend Matilda Hynes 💍 1865/6233	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	30 years 24 years	Karori Karori	6 weeks 4 days	My Residence at Karori	726		12 December 1865	The Rev. John Moir
109	13 December 1865	George Carter Emma George	George Carter Emma George 💍 1865/6236	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	25 years 18 years	Karori Road Karori Road	5 years about 14 years	My Residence at Karori Road	727	Thos. George, Father	28 December 1865	The Rev. John Moir

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

100% Contrast

100% Brightness

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).