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 224

District of Wellington Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
54	11 June 1866	John Cavey Catherine Leathern	John Casey Catherine Meagher 💍 1866/6526 John Granaty Catherine Cahill 💍 1866/6019 John Mather Catherine Murphy 💍 1866/5551 John Rowles Catherine Read 💍 1866/9472 John Crickett Catherine Menzies 💍 1866/4657	Bachelor Spinster	Brewer	23 years 22 years	Wellington Masterton	2 years about 2 years	Roman Catholic Chapel	734		June 26th 1866	The Rev. S.B. Petit Jean and others
55	12 June 1866	John Solong Caroline Folhurst	John A Tong Caroline Tolhurst 💍 1866/6319	Bachelor Spinster	Cabinetmaker	26 years 22 years	Wellington Wellington	3 years 17 years	Private Residence of the Reverend John Brown	663	Ann Folhurst, mother	June 12th 1866	The Rev. John Brown
56	12 June 1866	Thomas One Jane Clement	Thomas Orr Jane Clements 💍 1866/6403	Widower Spinster	Shipjoiner	29 years 24 years	Wellington Wellington	1 year 1 year	St Paul's Church	692		June 22th 1866	The Rev. R.O. Maxwell and others
57	15 June 1866	William Hall Lebsten Priscilla Beresford	William Hall Webster Priscilla Petford 💍 1866/6472	Bachelor Spinster	Draper	25 years 21 years	Wellington Wellington	18 years Near 8 years	Thorndon	715		June 28th 1866	The Rev. Arthur Stock and others
58	21st June 1866	William Hepland Blash Emma Cone		Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	26 years 22 years	Wellington Wellington	5 years 22 years	Residence of Emma Stiles	748
59	June 22nd 1866	Charles Nelson Brown Susan Copeland	Charles William Brown Susan Copeland 💍 1866/6598	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	24 years 20 years	Hutt Manawatu	6 months about 7 years	Residence of John Copeland				Certificate not yet issued
60	June 26th 1866	John Smoke Mary Smith	John Tuck Mary Smith 💍 1866/6433	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel Keeper	35 years 22 years	Hutt Hutt	5 months Many years	Residence of Mr Baird Smith

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).