Intentions to Marry, 1874

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840386, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 196

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
522	2nd November 1874	Charles Hands Adeline Greatbatch	Charles Hands Adeline Greatbach 💍 1874/13453	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Miner	23 years 21 years	Thames Karaka	2 years 1 month	In the dwelling house occupied by Henry Moore Karaka	25/23		2nd November 1874	Rev. James Hill
523	3rd November 1874	Edmund O'Keefe Jane Francis O'Gara	Edmund O'Keeffe Frances O'Gara 💍 1874/11626	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Miner	26 years 19 years	Wanakaraka Karaka Karaka	6 years 4 years	St. Francis' R. C. Church Thames	74/1963	Fanny [UNCLEAR] The Guardian	19th November 1874	Rev. James Mahony
524	11th November 1874	William Clark Julia O'Neill	William Clark Julia O'Neill 💍 1874/13456	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Miner	31 years 17 years	Thames Thames	4 years 4 years	In the dwelling house occupied by Mr. William Clark Devon St. Thames	25/24	her family	11th November 1874	Rev. Wm Clark
525	18th November 1874	Samuel Penson Cecilia Collop	Samuel Ensor Cecilia Gollop 💍 1874/11905	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith	24 years 17 years	Thames Karaka	6 years 3 years	In the dwelling house occupied by Mr. Samuel Penson Karaka Thames	20/69	William Collop her Father	19th November 1874	Rev. J. Cash
526	23rd November 1874	Frederick Roderwold Catherine McCann	Frederick Rodewald Catherine McCann 💍 1874/13459	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	38 years 21 years	Thames Thames	6 years 9 months	In the dwelling house occupied by Mr. Frederick Roderwold Bailey St. Thames	74/2595		23rd November 1874	Rev. James Hill
527	1st December 1874	William Madden Emily Spunan	William Madden Emily Spurway 💍 1874/11902	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel Manager	32 years 23 years	Thames Thames	1 year 5 years	In the dwelling house occupied by Thomas Grigsby Mackay Street Thames	20/61		17th December 1874	Rev. C. Bush
528	16th December 1874	Robert Guy Annie Rathray	Robert Guy Annie Rattray 💍 1874/11911	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	23 years 18 years	Thames Thames	3 years 2 years	Home occupied by Robert Guy Willoughby St Thames	20/64	Edward Rathray Mother	19th December 1874	Rev. J. Cash
529	17th December 1874	John Lock Sarah Hands	John Cock Sarah Hands 💍 1874/11893	Bachelor Spinster	Tinsmith Domestic	30 years 37 years	Thames Thames	1 week 6 months	The office of the Registrar of Marriages Shortland district	20/58		17th December 1874	Mr. Poyntz

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).