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 254

District of Nelson Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
153	24 February 1865	John Savage Harriett Ann Biggs	John Savage Harriet Ann Biggs 💍 1865/6716	Bachelor Spinster	Painter Shoe maker	24 20	City of Nelson City of Nelson	3 years 12 years	at the residence of Samuel Biggs	889	Samuel Biggs, Father	25 February 1865	Rev. William Kirk
154	27 February 1865	William Heury Gobeau Emma Hobbs Burt	William Henry Goddard Emma Hobbs Burt 💍 1865/6788	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	29 24	City of Nelson City of Nelson	5 years 4 years	at the residence of The Rev. Edw. Thomas manuka Street Nelson	915		27 February 1865	Rev. Edward Thomas
155	1 March 1865	Robert Smith Wallace Emma Ives	Robert Smith Wallace Emma Ives 💍 1865/4089	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	26 18	Waimea South Waimea South	10 years 14 years	at the residence of The Rev. Edw. Thomas manuka Street Nelson	916	William Ives, Father	1 March 1865	Rev. Edward Thomas
156	9 March 1865	Manuel Lourence Jane Harvey	Manoel Lourenço Jane Harvey 💍 1865/6878	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	30 23	City of Nelson City of Nelson	10 days 10 days	at Christ Church Nelson	945		9 March 1865	Rev. Geo. Henry Johnstone
157	15 March 1865	William Miles Naomi Patching	William Miles Naomi Patching 💍 1865/4101	Bachelor Spinster	House mason	20 20	City of Nelson City of Nelson	1 year 1 year	at the residence of Henry Van Farmer St. Vincent Street	890	Declaration that no person in N.Z has authority to consent John Patching Father	15 March 1865	Rev. William Kirk
158	31 March 1865	Joseph Busch Martha Higgs	Joseph Busch Martha Mary Higgs 💍 1865/6884	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	23 20	Aniseed Valley Waimea East	8 years 7 years	at Christchurch Nelson	947	ell artha Higgs Mother		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).