Intentions to Marry, 1869

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840381, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 243

District of Wellington Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
23	10 March 1869	Robert Davie Ellen Lawrence	Robert Davie Ellen Lawrence 💍 1869/5952	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	26 19	Wellington Wellington	5 years 10 years	Residence of the said Robert Davie, Willis Street	571	Alfred Lawrence, father	5 April 1869	Rev. John Moir & others
25	15 March 1869	John Kershaw Charlotte Elizabeth Lawrence	John Kershaw Charlotte Eliz Lawrence 💍 1869/5949	Bachelor Spinster	Housekeeper	31 22	Wellington Wellington	10 years 11 years	Residence of Mr. Alfred Laurence, Willis Street	570		14 April 1869	Rev. John Moir & others
26	20 March 1869	Charles Lichtwark Maria Rush	Charles Lichtwork Mary Rush 💍 1869/6087	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	22 19	Taita Taita	about 1 year 19 years	Roman Catholic Church "St. Peter's" Hutt	617	John George Rush, father	10 April 1869	Rev. C. Pertius & others
34	30 March 1869	Thomas Perry Ann McMahon	Thomas Perry Ann McMahon 💍 1869/5829	Bachelor Spinster	Painter & Glazier	29 27	Wellington Wellington	8 months 8 months	Residence of Rev. William Kirk, Manners Street	528		15 April 1869	Rev. William Kirk & others
35	31 March 1869	George Deyon Emma Jane Buck	George Dixon Emma Jane Duck 💍 1869/5841	Bachelor Spinster	Aerated Water Manufacturer	20 19	Wellington Wellington	many years many years	Wesleyan Chapel, Manners Street	532	Edward Deyon, father John Buck, father	23 April 1869	Rev. William Kirk & others
37	1 April 1869	Robert Walker Mary Allen	Robert Walker Mary Allen 💍 1869/6051 Robert Whitelaw Mary Ann Allen 💍 1869/7884	Widower Spinster	Labourer	44 26	Porirua Wellington	16 years 17 months	Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Wellington	605		5 May 1869	Robert Walker within the William Allen
38	1 April 1869	William Prince Jnr. Jane Spencer	William Prince Jane Spencer 💍 1869/5826	Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	32 18	Wellington Wellington	13 years 18 years	Wesleyan Chapel, Manners Street	527	Edmund Spencer, father	1 April 1869	Rev. William Kirk & 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).