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 529

District of Greymouth Quarter ending Jul - Sep

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Folio	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
151	4 July 1872	Charles Gardenier Mary Emily May	Charles Gardiner Mary Emily Way 💍 1872/7430	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher home	Full Full	Marden Same	6 years 6 months	Registrar's Office Greymouth	721	12 July 1872	Harry Kenrick Registrar
152	13 July 1872	Andrew Steel Mary Ann Summers	Andrew Steel Mary Ann Summers 💍 1872/7361	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter home	Full Full	Greymouth Same	7 years 7 years	Private House Mawhera Quay Greymouth	729	19 July 1872	Rev. Mr. McIntosh
153	22 July 1872	John Stewart Hepburn Archer Susan Elizabeth Holles	John Stewart Hepburn Archer Susan Elizabeth Hollis 💍 1872/7397	Bachelor Spinster	Dairyman home	Full Full	Greymouth Same	8 weeks 4 days	Presbyterian Church Greymouth	731	27 July 1872	Rev. Mr. Watkins
154	9 September 1872	John Ryan Christina Kean	John Ryan Christina Kean 💍 1872/5660	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper home	Full Full	Arnold Arnold	Fifteen years 7 months	Roman Catholic Chapel Arnold	732	12 September 1872	Rev. Father Pertuis
155	16 September 1872	Peter Thompson Eliza Baker Holder	Peter Thomson Elizabeth Baker Holder 💍 1872/7364	Bachelor Spinster	Manager of Saw Mills home	Full Full	Greymouth same	3 years 3 months	Private House Rev. Mr. McIntosh's	734	16 September 1872	Rev. Mr. McIntosh
156	24 September 1872	Christopher Browne Katherine Bourke	Christopher Irvine Catherine Bourke 💍 1872/5663	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher [UNCLEAR]	Full Full	Greymouth same	6 Days 7 Days	Roman Catholic Chapel Greymouth	734	24 September 1872	Rev. Father Pertuis

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).