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 459

District of Lyttelton 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
124	3 January 1866	George Hearwell Ellen Davis	George Weastell Eliza Davis 💍 1867/8155	Bachelor Spinster	Truck	22 20	Lyttelton Lyttelton	1 year 1 year	Lyttelton	1299		16 January 1867	J.B. Hands Francis Knowles
125	3 January 1867	James Stewart Mary Reid	James Stewart Mary Reid 💍 1867/8143	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	over 21 20	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 days 3 days	House of Thomas Raw		Thomas Raw, father	5 January 1867	Rev. John Gow
126	9 January 1867	Andrew Murie Jane Harris	Andrew Murrie Jane Harris 💍 1867/8146	Bachelor Spinster	Shipwright	30 25	Lyttelton Lyttelton	4 year 4 year	House of the Rev. John Gow	1296		10 January 1867	Rev. John Gow
127	Plan	William Drean Priscilla Oliver	William Dyson Priscilla Hicks Olliver 💍 1867/4178	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	30 23	Lyttelton Lyttelton	4 years 4 years	Dyson, Dublin Street	1297		[UNCLEAR]	Rev. D. Graham
128	[UNCLEAR]	Thomas M. Harris Margaret Rodgers	Thomas Hobbs Margaret Burgess 💍 1867/7426 Thomas Richards Margaret Regan 💍 1867/5194 Thomas Holmes Margaret Cooney 💍 1867/6628	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	22 21	Governors Bay Governors Bay	12 months 5 months	English Church	1298		21 February 1867	Rev. E. A. Lingard
129	4 February 1867	Thomas Bacon Annie Boyce	Thomas Bacon Annie Boyce 💍 1867/8131	Bachelor Spinster	Boatman	32 21	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 years 1 month	House of Thomas Bacon	1299		4 February 1867	Rev. I. Crump
130	11 February 1867	William Hamson Jane Humphreys	William Hamson Jane Humphreys 💍 1867/8134	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	29 21	Lyttelton Lyttelton	4 years 14 months	House of Robert Turner	1291		11 February 1867	Rev. John Crump
131	11 February 1867	William Allan Margaret [UNCLEAR]	William Allan Margaret McLeod 💍 1867/8158	Bachelor Spinster	Gardener	34 36	Lyttelton Lyttelton	7 years about 3 years	Trinity Church	1300		11 February 1867	Rev. F. Knowles
132	19 March 1867	Thomas Arthur Margaret Eliza Reid		Widower Widow	Settler	43 38	Lyttelton Lyttelton	2 1/2 years 16 years	Trinity Church	1301		19 March 1867	Rev. F. Knowles

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).