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 237

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
126	13 December 1866	Bernard Gallaghey Eliza Jane O'Conner	Bernard Gallagher Elizabeth Jane O'Conner 💍 1866/6541	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker	26 16	Wellington Wellington	3 years 5 days	St Mary's Cathedral, Thorndon	739	Hugh O'Connor, Father	13 December 1866	The Right Rev. Dr. Viard, Roman Catholic Bishop of Wellington, and others.
127	14 December 1866	William Edward Swafford Jane Daysh	William Edward Swafford Jane Daysh 💍 1866/6439	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	23 18	Hulks Hulk	23 years 18 years	Residence of William Swafford and others.	706	John Daysh, Father	14 December 1866	The Rev. William McGovern and others.
128	14 December 1866	Robert MacIntyre Margaret Jane Beck	Robert Macintyre Margaret Jane Deck 💍 1866/6637	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	25 22	Wellington Wellington	upwards of 12 years 2 years	Registrar's Office, Wellington	790		14 December 1866	The Registrar of Marriages, Wellington, and others
129	21 December 1866	John Prosser Jane Hughes	John Prosser Jane Hughes 💍 1866/6493	Bachelor Spinster	Livery Stable Keeper	22 17	Wellington Wellington	about 18 months 1 year	St. Peter's Church, Te Aro	725	Henry Hughes, Father	21 December 1866	The Rev. Arthur Stock, BA, and others.
130	24 December 1866	Thomas Hodgins Mary Ann Jones	Thomas Hodgin Margaret Jones 💍 1866/6451	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	23 23	Wellington Wellington	over 1 year about 1 month	Roman Catholic Chapel	708		24 December 1866	The Very Rev. J.P.O'Reilly and others
131	31 December 1866	Thomas Maher Mary Walsh	Thomas Maher Mary Walsh 💍 1867/4399 Thomas Meagher Mary Walsh 💍 1867/6085	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	26 20	Trades Town Trades Town	1 year about 4 months	Roman Catholic Cathedral, Thorndon		No person residing in the Colony authorised by law to give consent to the Marriage of Mary Walsh	31 December 1866	The Right Rev. Dr. Viard, Roman Catholic Bishop, by law empowered to this Colony

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).