Intentions to Marry, 1867

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840379, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 224

District of Wellington Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
10	January 29th 1867	Richard Pierce Jane Orr	Richard Pierce Jane Orr 💍 1867/5965	Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor	36 33	Wellington Wellington	nearly 2 years 1 year	St Paul's Church Thorndon	551		January 29th 1867	The Revd P.H. Maxwill M.A. and others
11	January 30th 1867	William Patrick Crawford Louisa Emma Webb	Wm Patrick Crawford Louisa Emma Wild 💍 1867/5896	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	26 22	Wellington Wellington	7 months 6 months	Residence of Mrs Wellington Street	527		January 30th 1867	The Rev John Moir and others
12	January 30th 1867	Edward Vaughan Jane Gourlay	Edward Vaughan Jane Gourlay 💍 1867/5893	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	31 28	Hutt Wellington	3 months 1 week	Free Church of Scotland Willis Street	526		January 30th 1867	The Rev. John Moir and others
13	February 1st 1867	James Hodgson Eliza Elizabeth Bird	James Stendifen Eliza Elizabeth Bird 💍 1867/5929	Bachelor Spinster	Shipwright	26 19	Wellington Wellington	about 9 years 6 years	Willis Street	538	William Bird, Father	February 1st 1867	The Rev [UNCLEAR] and others
14	February 4th 1867	Hugh Sygram Ann Rebecca Lambers	Hugh Ingram Ann Rebekah Lambert 💍 1867/6037	Bachelor Widow	Shoemaker	35 40	Wellington Wellington	12 months 10 years	St Peter's Church Willis Street	570		February 19th 1867	The Rev. A. Stock, B.A. and others
15	February 5th 1867	William George Rance Catherine Cashen	George Raines Catharine Cashen 💍 1867/6016	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	26 20	Wellington Wellington	6 years over 3 years	Roman Catholic Chapel Manners Street	569	There was no person in the Colony authorized to give consent	February 5th 1867	The Rev. J G O'Reilly and others
16	February 12th 1867	William Thomson Eliza Green	William Thomson Eliza Green 💍 1867/5926	Bachelor Spinster	Iron-moulder	28 nearly 21 years	Wellington Wellington	2 years 18 years	Scotch Church Lambton Quay	537	Isaac Green, Father	February 12th 1867	The Rev. J. Tums and others
17	February 18th 1867	Florence Romwald McCarthy Margaret Sarah Bird	Florence Ronald McCarthy Margaret Sarah Bird 💍 1867/5902	Bachelor Spinster	Printer	33 20	Wellington Wellington	2 years 2 years	Residence of the said F. R. McCarthy Willis Street	529	William Bird, Father	February 22nd 1867	The Rev John Moir, and others
18	February 18th 1867	Arthur Hayward Coven Kate Hoffard	Arthur Hayward Owen Kate Hoggard 💍 1867/6034	Bachelor Spinster	Chemical	30 20	Wellington Wellington	about 10 years 2 years	St Peter's Church Te Aro	575	Sarah Levy, mother	February 19th 1867	The Rev A. Stock BA 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).