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 223

District of Wellington Quarter ending 30 June

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
47	4 May 1866	Adam Glasgow Mary Steward	Adam Glasgow Mary Stewart 💍 1866/6424	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	35 19	Taurarua Taurarua	6 years 2 years	Residence of Donald Cameron, Manawatu	699	Duncan Steward, father	7 May 1866	The Rev. William McGoveran and others
48	9 May 1866	John Edwin Bank Alice Alicia McLeod	John Edwin Butt Alice Alicia McIvor 💍 1866/6313	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	24 22	Wellington Wellington	15 months 18 months	Scotch Church	661		9 May 1866	The Rev. John Moir and others
49	14 May 1866	William Pickin Caroline Alice White	William Picken Caroline Alice White 💍 1866/6316	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	28 18	Porirua Road Porirua Road	10 mos. 10 years	Residence of the Rev. John Kinross	662	Henry Arthur White, father	14 May 1866	The Rev. John Moir and others
50	18 May 1866	Edwin Eleazar Pratt Louisa Ann Grey	Edwin Eleazar Batt Louisa Membrey 💍 1866/6562	Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	25 21	Wellington Wellington	8 years 4 months	Private Residence of the Rev. Mr. Paterson, Sydney Street	746		18 May 1866	The Rev. Charles Fraser and others
51	25 May 1866	Henry Veale Emma Anna Hawes alias West	Henry Veale Emma Anna Hawes 💍 1866/6271	Bachelor Spinster	Barman	38 37	Wellington Wellington	about 7 years 8 years	"Albion Hotel" Tory Street	646		25 May 1866	The Rev. Isaac Harding and others
52	28 May 1866	Richard Marriott Mary Ann Boyd	Richard Marriott Mary Ann Boyd 💍 1866/6565	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker	28 19	Tory Street, Wellington Wellington	9 years 1 year	Primitive Methodist Chapel, Sydney Street	746	John Frederick Boyd, father	28 May 1866	The Rev. Charles Fraser and others
53	29 May 1866	Thomas Rodgers Eliza Greenaway	Thomas Rogers Eliza Grennan 💍 1866/6442	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	26 25	Hutt Hutt	26 years 2 years	Roman Catholic Chapel	705		29 May 1866	The Rev. Patrick O'Brien and others

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).