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 210

District of Wellington 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
142	1 Feb 1872	David M Nicoll Jessie Randall	David McNicoll Jessie Randall 💍 1872/8489	Bachelor Spinster	Minister (Wesleyan) di Randall	28 22	Wellington Port Chalmers	13 days	Wesleyan Church	72/1309		Feb 1872	Not addressed
143	Feby 15	Robert Thomas Styles Mary Jane Julia Hall	Robert Thomas Styles Mary Jane Julia Hall 💍 1872/4914	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith Bookbinder	22 17	Wellington Wellington	22 yrs 3 yrs	Registrar's Office	1094	Wm Hall, father	Feby 22	Registrar of Marriages Wellington
144	Feby 24	Thomas Strudenck Betsy Blatchford	Thomas Frederick Alexander Barton Betsy Blatchford 💍 1872/4842	Bachelor Spinster	Licensed Victualler Residing with her father	31 22	Upper Hutt Lower Hutt	14 yrs 7 yrs	Church of England	1078	Tho Dance Blatchford, her father	Feb 24	Rev. Thos Dance
145	Feby 28	Patrick McLoughlin Elizabeth Jane Marshall	Patrick McLoughlin Elizabeth Jane Marshall 💍 1872/4917	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer Domestic Servant	28 21	Johnsonville Johnsonville	1 yr 1 1/2 yrs	Registrar's Office	721		Mar 11	Registrar of Marriages
146	Feby 28	Ishual Bell Mary Ann Muscham	Joshua Bell Mary Ann Moxham 💍 1872/4788	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter di Wm Muscham, Upland Farm	32 26	Cuba Street Upland Farm	3 yrs 4 yrs	Wesleyan Church	1065		Mar 13	Rev. J. Buddle
147	Mar 1	Charles Thomas Richardson Charlotte Nicholas	Charles Thomas Richardson Charlotte Nicholas 💍 1872/4869	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk di Thos Nicholas	34 26	Wellington Wellington	17 yrs 10 yrs	St. Paul's Church	1083		Mar 1	Rev. B.W. Harvey
148	Mar 2	Thomas Junnis Elizabeth Hanning	Thomas Sunnex Elizabeth Hanning 💍 1872/4965	Bachelor Widow	Laborer di Wm Hanning	27 24	Upper Hutt Upper Hutt	20 yrs 15 yrs	Church of England	1111		Mar 2	Rev. C.J.S. Nicholl

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).