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 217

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
153	22 May 1872	Orpen Daniel Finch Mary Hannah Callaghan	Orpen Daniel Finch Mary Hannah Callaghan 💍 1872/5076	Bachelor Widow	Labourer Brickmaker	29 23	Wellington Wellington	9 yrs 5 yrs	House of Mr Chaplin, Adelaide Road	1148		22 June 1872	Rev. J.J.Tweet
154	23 May 1872	William Reynolds Caroline Paap	William George Terry Caroline Card 💍 1872/7805	Bachelor Widow	Sharebroker Livery Stable Kpr	29 28	Wellington Wellington	2 mo 2 mo	House of Rev. J. Moir			23 May 1872	Rev. J. Moir
155	29 May 1872	William John Day Elizabeth Hastenov	William John Dark Elizabeth Hastens 💍 1872/4794 William Wollstein Elizabeth Carter 💍 1872/8723 William May Elizabeth Starr 💍 1872/7760 William Hamilton Elizabeth Costello 💍 1872/8279	Widower Widow	Carpenter Engineer	42 32	Wellington Wellington	9 yrs 15 yrs	Wesleyan Chapel, Manners Street	1067		29 May 1872	Rev. J. Buddle
156	1 June 1872	John Brumby Susan Glover	John Pounceby Susan Glover 💍 1872/4956	Bachelor Spinster	Oyster Salesman Milliner	33 24	Wellington Wellington	2 yrs 9 mo	House of Geo: Golling Esqre, Ghurness Street	1108		1 June 1872	Rev. J. Moir
157	1 June 1872	William Gray Amy Jordan	William Gray Amy Hoggard 💍 1872/4881	Bachelor Spinster	Chief Clerk, Gen. Post Office late Shopkeeper	24 25	Wellington Wellington	4 yrs 18 yrs	St. Paul's Church	1085		1 June 1872	Rev. R.W. Harvey
158	6 June 1872	Charles Holland Harriet Pilcher	Charles Hollard Harriett Pilcher 💍 1872/4857	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 18	Lower Hutt Hutt	22 yrs 11 yrs	Church of England, Lower Hutt	1081	H. Valentine, Guardian	6 June 1872	Rev. J. Harcourt
159	10 June 1872	Thomas Viner Crundwell Susannah Miskelley	Thomas Viner Crundwell Susannah Miskelly 💍 1872/9290	Bachelor Spinster	Publican	29 22	Wellington Wellington	11 mo 8 mo	Roman Catholic Cathedral, Hill Street	72/388		10 June 1872	Rev. J.B. Petit Jean

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).