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 236

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
119	22 November 1866	Joseph Pudney Ann Edwards	Joseph Pudney Ann Edwards 💍 1866/6490	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	24 19	Wellington Wellington	many years about 5 years	St Peters Church	722	John Edwards, Father	22 November 1866	The Rev. Arthur Stock, and others
120	1 December 1866	Thomas Love Mary Ann Jones	Thomas Hodgin Margaret Jones 💍 1866/6451	Widower Widow	Carpenter	about 54 40	Wellington Wellington	two years about 6 months	Residence of the said Thomas Love, Tinakori Rd, Wellington	755		1 December 1866	The Rev. Charles Carter, and others
121	4 December 1866	Matthew Murdoch Louisa Maria Fawnsson	Matthew Murdock Louisa Maria Parsonage 💍 1866/6418	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	28 about 20	Wellington Wellington	2 years about 10 years	St. Paul's Church, Thorndon	697	Caroline Fawnsson, mother	5 December 1866	The Rev. C.H. Maxwell, and others
122	7 December 1866	Gustav Edward Clayton Ellen Broadbent	Gustaf Edward Jansson Ellen Broadbent 💍 1866/6286	Bachelor Spinster	Shopman	25 20	Wellington Wellington	about 4 years 1 month	Wesleyan Union Church, Manners Street	652	No person residing in New Zealand to whose consent to the minor's marriage is required by law	7 December 1866	The Rev. Isaac Harding, and others
123	7 December 1866	Henry Smith Rosetta Smith		Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	39 22	Wellington Wellington	18 months 22 years	Primitive Methodies Chapel				Certificate not yet issued
124	10 December 1866	John Rees Davies Emily England	John Rees Davies Emily England 💍 1866/6634	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	26 20	Hulk Hulk	about 6 months 11 years	Registrars Office, Wellington	769	Charles England, Father	10 December 1866	The Registrar of Marriages of Wellington, & others
125	12 December 1866	Charles Hilby Jackson Elizabeth Grace	Charles Welby Jackson Elizabeth Grace 💍 1866/6298	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	27 24	Hutt Hutt	3 days many years	St James' Church, Hutt	656		12 December 1866	The Rev. J.C. Kerry, 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).