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 516

District of Hokitika 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
624	10 August 1874	Patrick Owen Catherine Minahan	Patrick Dunn Catherine Minahan 💍 1874/9883	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	32 years 30 years	Hokitika Hokitika	6 months 12 months	Roman Catholic Church	1366	10 August 1874	Rev. R.A. Martin
625	24 August 1874	Patrick O'Brien Emma Watkins	Patrick O'Brien Emma Watkins 💍 1874/9706	Bachelor Widow	Engineer	36 years 30 years	Hokitika Hokitika	12 months 12 months	At the Office of the Registrar	1306	24 August 1874	The Registrar
626	31 August 1874	Joseph Blackburn Annette Prichards	Joseph Blackburn Annette Prichard 💍 1874/10105	Bachelor Spinster	Inspector of Public Works	38 years 28 years	Hokitika Hokitika	8 years 6 years	At the private Residence of Richard Reeves	1440	31 August 1874	Rev. Arded H. Harper
627	11 September 1874	James John Rawlings Fanny Alice Simpson	James John Rawlings Fanny Alice Simpson 💍 1874/9703	Widower Spinster	Miner	45 years 21 years	Blue Spur Hokitika	10 years 1 day, having just arrived from England	At the Office of the Registrar	1305	11 September 1874	The Registrar
628	12 September 1874	James [UNCLEAR] Glasgow Annie Turnbull	James McClure Glasgow Annie Turnbull 💍 1874/12508	Bachelor Spinster	Bank Clerk	24 years 21 years	Union Bank Hokitika Hokitika	5 years 8 years	In the private residence of bride's father, Fitzherbert St, Hokitika	2271	26 September 1874	Rev. James Kirkland
629	26 September 1874	William Smith Jeanette Colman Johnston	William Smith Jeanette Colman Johnstone 💍 1874/10108	Bachelor Widow	Contractor no occupation	37 years 27 years	Kanieri Hokitika	8 years 6 mos	In the Church of England Hokitika	74/1441	26 September 1874	Rev. H.J.C. Gilbert

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).