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 125

District of Auckland 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
2964	16 October 1866	Joseph Alder Smith Lydia Ripley		Widower Spinster	Jailor Dress maker	34 28	Onehunga Pitt St. Auckland	14 days 3 yrs.	St. Peter's Onehunga			18th Oct 1866	J. F. Lloyd
2965	17 October 1866	George Oates Sweet Hannah Mansfield		Bachelor Spinster	Soldier 50th Regt.	23 22	Auckland Parnell	7 months 2 yrs.	Chapel in High St. Auckland			18th Oct	B. Lynch
2966	18 October 1866	Alexander Mason Williams Mary Helen Hayland	Alexander Mason Williams Mary Helen Heyland 💍 1866/5245	Bachelor Spinster	Medical	24 23	Hobson St. Auckland Waterloo Quadrant	18 mlts.	St. Paul's Auckland	286
2967	19 October 1866	Charlton Dawson Maria Louisa Greenway	Charlton Dawson Maria Louisa Greenway 💍 1866/5164	Bachelor Spinster	Lieut 18. R.I.	30 19	Auckland Auckland	2 months 5 yrs.	Private Chapel of Bishop Selwyn Parnell	289	P. Greenway Father	19th Oct	Bishop Selwyn
2968	20 October 1866	Patrick Burke Bridget Hagan	Patrick Burke Bridget Hogan 💍 1866/5557	Bachelor Widow	Labourer	37 38	Otahuhu Otahuhu	6 yrs. 10 mkts	The Catholic Ch. Otahuhu	393		20th Oct	Father M. S. O'Hara
2969	20 October 1866	John O'Donnell Mary meagher	John O'Donnell Mary Meagher 💍 1866/4945	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	23 17	Howick Howick	2 wks. 16 yrs.	The Catholic Ch at Howick	185	Alice maughan mother	20th Oct.	Father Fynes
2970	22 October 1866	John Aumby Isabella Dyer	John Allonby Isabella Pye 💍 1866/5611 John Scott Isabella Farmer 💍 1866/6373	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Servant	27 21	Auckland Auckland	15 mkts 3 yrs.	The dwelling house of James Pye Newmarket Auckland	413	James Pye Father	5th Nov	James M. Smith
2971	22 October 1866	William Wrickler Grace Hook	William Meikle Grace Hook 💍 1866/5608	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	28 28	Auckland Auckland	1 mkt 3 days	The Bar [UNCLEAR] House of [UNCLEAR] Edmonds Short St. Auckland	412		22nd Oct.	James Rudin Smith
2972	23 October 1866	Robert Quinn Mary Derrick	Robert Quinn Mary Derrick 💍 1866/5479	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	33 28	[UNCLEAR] in Auckland Freemans Bay	3 days 3 wks	St. Patricks Church Auckland	367		23rd Oct	Walter McDonald

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).