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 337

District of Wellington 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
236	4 December 1874	Ezra Jones Sarah Annibeagay	Ezra Jones Sarah Ann Veazey 💍 1874/12316	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner Servant	20 20	Wellington Wellington	15mo 15mo	St Peters Church	2205	No relation in N.Zealand	21 December 1874	Benj. A. Stock
237	4 December 1874	William John Raymond Rosetta Sievers	William John Raymond Rossetta Sievers 💍 1874/13066	Widower Spinster	Clerk	45 21	Wellington Wellington	10 yrs 21 yrs	St Pauls Church Thorndon	2461		4 December 1874	Robt. Wood Harvey
238	9 December 1874	David Robertson Surdie Ann Catherine Holdsworth	David Robertson Purdie Ann Catherine Holdsworth 💍 1874/12241	Bachelor Spinster	Householder	26 23	Wellington Wellington	8 dys 6mo.	House of J.G. Holdsworth Tinakori Road	2179		9 December 1874	J.G. Holdsworth
239	15 December 1874	Henry Fleet Eliza Ann King	Henry Fleet Eliza Ann King 💍 1874/13093	Bachelor Spinster	Brickmaker	23 22	Lower Hutt Lower Hutt	12mo 4mo	St James Church Hutt	2470		29 December 1874	Rev. J. Fancourt
240	15 December 1874	Henry Flux Sarah Fleet	Henry Flux Sarah Fleet 💍 1874/13090	Bachelor Spinster	Brickmaker	24 20	Hutt Hutt	2mo 2mo	St James Church Hutt	2469	Joseph Fleet, Father	29 December 1874	Rev. J. Fancourt
241	16 December 1874	John David Adlam Rebecca Evetts	John David Adlam Rebecca Evetts 💍 1874/12295	Widower Spinster	Farm Labourer Servant	26 17	Wellington Wellington	3mo 16 mo	House of Wm Green Taranaki Street	2198	Chas Evetts Father	28 December 1874	Rev. Jn. Morley
242	16 December 1874	Benjamin Raynes Alice Parkin	Benjamin Rayner Alice Perkins 💍 1874/12310	Widower Spinster	Farmer Servant	30 28	Taita Taita	21 yrs 3mo	St Peter's Church	2203		16 December 1874	Benj. A. Stock

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).