Intentions to Marry, 1866

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840378, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 201

District of Wanganui 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
1	5 January 1866	John Pike Mary Ann Willie	John Pike Mary Ann Willis 💍 1866/6718	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	27 17	Wanganui	12 months 9 years	at the Roman Catholic Chapel	797	Jane Lee, Mother	5 January 1866	James Nixon
2	5 January 1866	George Randing Eleenora Robinson	George Rawding Mary Robinson 💍 1866/6721	Bachelor Spinster	Servant	22 20	Wanganui	14 years 18 months	at the Roman Catholic Church	798	Eleonora Robinson, Mother	5 January 1866	James Nixon
3	10 January 1866	Samuel Moore Mary Jane Mullen	Samuel Deane Mary Jane Mullins 💍 1866/6724	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	36 18	Wanganui	4 months 12 years	Catholic Church	799	Catherine Mullen, Mother	12 January 1866	Read J Beazley
4	20 January 1866	John Shaw Elizabeth Galpin	John Shaw Elizabeth Galpin 💍 1866/6640	Widower Spinster	Carpenter	31 19	Rangitikei do	8 months 10 years	at the Wesleyan Chapel	771	Wm Galpin, Father	20 January 1866	M.A. Eliott
5	31 January 1866	Robert Law Eliza Philipse	Robt Law Eliza Philips 💍 1866/6760	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	27 23	Wanganui do	2 months 13 months	Catholic Church	811	Elizth Bater, Mother	31 January 1866	R.J. Duncan
6	8 February 1866	Heman Wilson Mary Jane Doughty	Thomas Wilson Mary Jane Doughty 💍 1866/6772	Bachelor Spinster	Stockkeeper	28 17	Wanganui do	10 months 17 years	at St. Pauls Church, Patea	815	John Doughty, Father	8 February 1866	Schoolmaster
7	13 February 1866	George H. Marshall Mary Ann Jones	George Driscoll Mary Ann Tolmie 💍 1866/9334	Bachelor Widow	Coacher	27 32	Wanganui do	18 months 8 years	at the Roman Catholic Chapel	800		13 February 1866	Thos. L. Richards
8	16 February 1866	Andrew Gilmour Jane Johnson	Andrew Gilmour Jane Stapley 💍 1866/6655	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	27 24	Wanganui do	4 years 17 years	at the Residence of John Johnson	801	Martin Munro, Father	16 February 1866	Thos. L. Richards
9	20 July 1866	James Johnson Elizabeth Howard	James Johnson Elizabeth Howard 💍 1866/6730	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	27 18	Wanganui do	11 months 5 years	at the Wesleyan Parsonage	773		20 July 1866	Read J Beazley
10	23 March 1866	Frederick I. Store Ann Williams	Frederick Henry Moore Jane Williams 💍 1866/9805 Frederick Francis Roe Hannah Williams 💍 1866/6646	Bachelor Widow	Storekeeper	36 30	Tauranga do	10 years 3 years	at the Residence of Mrs. Stewart Tauranga	772		23 March 1866	Alexr. Reid Gilfillan
11	24 March 1866	George Franklin Jane Jenkins	Samuel Walker Jane Jenkins 💍 1866/6664	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	36 27	Tauranga do	10 years 4 years	at the Residence of Mr. Stewart Tauranga	772		24 March 1866	Alexr. Reid Gilfillan

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).