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 793

District of Chatham Islands 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
22	9 October 1871	James Lungdale Mary Ann Hunt		Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	32 20	Pitts Island Do	6 years 2 years	Registrars Office	714		9 October 1871	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
23	19 Dec	Rehemon Neugamate Nga tere Rehi		Bachelor Spinster		30 23	Waitangi Do	20 yrs 23 yrs	Do	714		20 Dec 1871	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
24	10 May	Te One Lia Ri Eliza Muri Muri		Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	40 40	Pitts Island Do	2 yrs 2 yrs	Do	711		10 May 1872	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
25	22 Augt	Panga Panga Emma Iheki		Widower Spinster	Sheepfarmer	39 14	Waitangi Do	20 yrs 14 yrs	Do	710	Rehimona Ngamate Guardian	22 Augt 1872	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
26	3 Sept	Romani Perunzer Ko Kare Kauru		Bachelor Spinster	Settler	40 25	Queenga Do	30 yrs 20 yrs	Natohau	709		3 Sept 1872	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
27	23 Sept	Felix Arthur Douglas Anne Marguret Shand	Felix Arthur Douglas Cox Ann Margaret Shand 💍 1872/9335	Bachelor Spinster	Sheepfarmer	25 28	Waitangi Kaingaroa	5 yrs 17 yrs	Do	708		24 Sept 1872	R.J. Lahauze Registrar
28	31 Dec	Albert Pearson Brown Mercy Dorothea Leguencul	Albert Pearson Brown Mary Dorothea Regnault 💍 1872/9332	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	20 19	Chatham Islds Do	2 yrs 19 yrs	Do	707	Brother Henry Brown	31 Dec 1872	R.M. Rayner Registrar

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

100% Contrast

100% Brightness

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).