Intentions to Marry, 1872

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840384, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 152

District of Shortland Quarter ending Oct - Dec

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
337	10 December 1872	Joseph Henry Emitt Jane Roycroft	Joseph Henry Emett Jane Roycroft 💍 1872/9182	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	22 years 19 years	Punga Flat Punga Flat	18 months 12 months	The dwelling house occupied by James Foreman, Punga Flat	712	James Foreman, Her Father	10 December 1872	Rev. James Hill
338	13 December 1872	Manuel Filicina Diermier Maria Charlotte Duncan	Manuel Silveira Maria Charlotte Norton 💍 1872/9179	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	44 years 47 years	Shortland Shortland	4 days 4 days	The dwelling house occupied by Duncan McAlpine, Karaka Road	713		16 December 1872	Rev. James Hill
339	21 December 1872	Andrew Parkin Martha Elizabeth Meacham		Bachelor Spinster	Miner	33 years 21 years	Shortland Shortland	3 years 3 years	The dwelling house occupied by George Meacham, Mackay St, Shortland	7293		21 December 1872	Rev. James Buller
340	23 December 1872	William Hamilton Elizabeth Costello	William Hamilton Elizabeth Costello 💍 1872/8279	Bachelor Spinster	Bushman	24 years 17 years	Tapu Tapu	4 years 16 years	Dwelling house occupied by John Costello, Hastings, Tapu	722	John Costello, her Father	23 December 1872	Rev. Francis O'Riordan
341	23 December 1872	George Campbell Helen Morris	George Campbell Helen Morris 💍 1872/8276	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	31 years 25 years	Collar Bone Collar Bone	5 years 7 months	The dwelling house occupied by Edward Collar Bone, The Thames	723		23 December 1872	Rev. William Jones
342	24 December 1872	Thomas Hart Rachel Thompson	Thomas Hart Rachel Thompson 💍 1872/8444	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	36 years 22 years	Tararu Tararu	27 years 2 months	The dwelling house occupied by Thomas Hart, Tararu Road, Thames	724		24 December 1872	Rev. James Buller
343	28 December 1872	William Charles Wright Caroline Francis Blake	William Charles Wright Caroline Frances Blake 💍 1873/9553	Widower Spinster		42 years 25 years	Shortland Shortland	19 years 3 years	St George's Church	731612		28 December 1872	Rev. G. Lush
344	30 December 1872	Thomas Mills Agnes Douglas	Thomas Mills Agnes Douglas 💍 1873/9550	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Servant	26 years 21 years	Grahamstown Grahamstown	14 years 12 months	St George's Church	731611		30 December 1872	Rev. G. Lush

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).