Intentions to Marry, 1868

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840380, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 293

District of Quarter ending

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
192	1 April 1868	Samuel Parsons Annie Roberts	Samuel Parsons Annie Roberts 💍 1868/7745	Bachelor Spinster	farmer Nil	28 20	Meanee Napier Puketapu	2 yrs 2 yrs	At the Residence of Wm Dolby Fernhill Pukelapu	1075		7 April 1868	Rev J Merriman Meanee
193	7 April 1868	Florence Sullivan Maria Donovan	Florence Sullivan Maria Donavan 💍 1868/7685	Bachelor Spinster	Publican Milliner	34 24	Napier Napier	4 yrs 1 yr	At the Roman Catholic Church Shakespere Rd Napier	1054		17 April 1868	Rev [UNCLEAR] Shakespere Rd Napier
194	15 May 1868	John Henn Mary Mulcahy	John Hern Mary Mulcane 💍 1868/7691	Bachelor Spinster	Late Army Hospital Corp Nil Domestic	39 29	Barrack Napier Dickens St Napier	4 yrs 1 Month	At the Roman Catholic Church Shakespere Rd Napier	1056		15 May 1868	[UNCLEAR]
195	18 May 1868	Isaac Neil Leah Smith	Isaac Kent Leah Smith 💍 1868/7721	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Nil	28 29	Carlyle Street Napier Tennyson St Napier	7 days 2 Months	At the Residence of John Martin Tennyson St Napier	1066		18 May 1868	[UNCLEAR]
196	18 May 1868	Edward Chadd Mary Collins	Edward Chase Mary Collins 💍 1868/7688	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Nil	28 17	Napier Napier	23 yrs 15 Months	At the Roman Catholic Chapel Shakespere Road Napier	1055	Francis Collins Guardian Father Street Napier	18 May 1868	Rev. Father [UNCLEAR] Napier
197	19 May 1868	Herbert Thomas Marion Rodd	Herbert Thomas Halsey Knight Marion Ross 💍 1868/7781	Bachelor Spinster	Officer 99th Regt Nil	26 18	Napier Napier	4 yrs 8 yrs	At the Wesleyan Church Tennyson St Napier	1087	Anne Maria Road Mother	19 May 1868	Rev John Innes Napier

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).