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 609

District of Lyttelton 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
170	5 October 1874	Alfred John Rogers Rachael McKervon	Alfred John Rogers Rachel McKeown 💍 1874/11587	Widower Spinster	Accountant	32 full	Lyttelton Christehurch	7 years 5 years	St Michaels Church	1950			Edwards
171	26 October 1874	Walter George Forbes Catherine Fleming	Walter George Foster Catherine Fleming 💍 1874/11863	Bachelor Spinster	Station Manager	29 22	Purau Port Levy	over 3 days 1/2 year	The House of Mr R Fleming Port Levy	2048		26 October	The Revd D Hampton
172	30 October 1874	Julius Christie Christina Blousten	Julius Christie Christine Clausen 💍 1874/11560	Bachelor Spinster	Lawyer Domestic Servant	25 19	Lyttelton Lyttelton	5 days 5 days	The Quarantine Station Ripa Island Lyttelton	1940	No Person in Colony having authority	October 30	The Revd L Lohr
173	30 October 1874	Peter Petersen Rebecca Christensen	Peter Peterson Rebecca Christensen 💍 1874/5857	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	22 20	Lyttelton Lyttelton	5 days 5 days	The Quarantine Station Ripa Island Lyttelton	1941	Paul Christenson father	October 30	The Revd L Lohr
174	4 November 1874	Charles Bicheno Eliza Barnes	Charles Bicheno Eliza Barnes 💍 1874/12571	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Domestic Servant	34 23	Lyttelton Lyttelton	5 days 7 days	The House of the Rev. Mr Gowan Lyttelton	2293		November 4	The Revd W.D. McGowan
175	23 November 1874	Arthur James Annie George	Arthur James Annie George 💍 1874/11299	Widower Spinster	Engineer Domestic Servant	27 23	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 months 14 days	The Holy Trinity Church Lyttelton	1849		November 23	The Rev. Frederick Pember
176	3 December 1874	Patrick Gallagher Mary Connor	William Fricker Mary Connor 💍 1874/8026	Widower Widow	Cooper Matron	42 40	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 years over 3 days	The Roman Catholic Chapel Lyttelton	1547		December 3	The Rev. Francis DelMonte
177	4 December 1874	John Parkyn Jane Wheeler	John Parkyns Jane Trewheela 💍 1874/13960	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer Dress Maker	40 33	Lyttelton Lyttelton	6 months 3 weeks	The Holy Trinity Church Lyttelton	2772		December 4	The Rev. Frederick Pember

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).