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 297

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
203	23 July 1868	Henry Stevens Amy Hyde		Widower Spinster	Bricklayer Domestic	34 32	Hastings Street Napier Hardinge R Napier	4 years 2 years	At the residence of Amy Hyde	700		23rd July 1868	J. Michael Manuel
204	27 July 1868	John Scott Black Margant McClure	John Scott Black Margaret McLure 💍 1868/7724	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Nil	33 26	Wairoa Napier Napier	2 years 1 week	At the Presbyterian Church Tennyson St Napier	1067		27 July 1868	John Morice Napier
205	28 July 1868	Thomas Saunders Emma Lee	Thomas Sanders Emma Lee 💍 1868/7778	Bachelor Spinster	Auctioneer Nil	26 26	Meanee, Napier Waipawa, Napier	3 months 3 [UNCLEAR]	At the Episcopalian Church Tennyson Street Napier	1086		28 July 1868	J. Townsend Napier
206	8 August 1868	James Bush Julia Bridget Linehan	James Bush Julia Bridget Minahan 💍 1868/4856	Bachelor Widow	Sailor Dressmaker	42 34	Napier White Rd. Napier	4 years 12 years	At the Roman Catholic Church Shakespear Road	1087		8 August 1868	J. Forest Napier
207	10 August 1868	George Love Mary Jane Friend	George Love Mary Jane Friend 💍 1868/7787	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Nil	24 18	Clive, Napier Meanee, Napier	6 months 3 years	At the Wesleyan Church Tennyson St Napier	1089	Sarah Ann Guppy, Mother	10 Aug 1868	J. Townsend Napier
208	25 Aug 1868	James Dempsey Mary Gilligan	James Dempsey Mary Gilligan 💍 1868/7739	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Nil	27 18	Maraekakaho, Napier Nairon, Napier	6 years 5 [UNCLEAR]	At the residence of James Gilligan Nairon, Napier	1093	James Gilligan Father	25 Aug. 1868	[UNCLEAR] Fathers Napier

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

100% Contrast

100% Brightness

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).