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 771

District of Port Chalmers Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
1	19 January 1874	Frank Dunnett Ann Jane Hodgson	Frank Dunnett Anne Jane Hodgson 💍 1874/7327	Widower Spinster	Artist	48 Full	George Street Port Chalmers George Street Port Chalmers	3 days 3 days	At the National Bank Port Chalmers	74/693	19 January 1874	Rev. Wilfred Nevill Leeson
2	19 January 1874	Charles Holsey Mary Coleman	Charles Woolsey Mary Coleman 💍 1874/7318	Bachelor Spinster	Railing	44 35	George Street Port Chalmers Harrington Street Port Chalmers	3 years 1 year	At the House of Mrs Coleman, Harrington Street	74/490	19 January 1874	Rev. Charles S. Rigg
3	21 January 1874	Nicholas Barb Schumachen Hannah Breeze	Nicholas Carle Shumacher Hannah Matthea Wold 💍 1874/7330	Bachelor Spinster	Stevedore	28 25	Harrington St Port Chalmers do	3 yrs 14 days	At the Residence of Mrs Schumachen Harrington St	74/494	21 January 1874	Rev. Alfred N. Leeson
4	27 January 1874	Charles Norman Cennive Bather Hildebrand	Charles Notman Anna Catharine Hildebrand 💍 1874/7321	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	28 21	Carey's Bay Port Chalmers do	5 weeks 8 weeks	At the Mrs House of Mr. Goldes Carey's Bay	74/491	27 January 1874	Rev. Jno Johnstone
5	10 February 1874	William Pentney Elizabeth Hore	William Pentney Elizabeth Fort 💍 1874/7531	Bachelor Spinster	Groom Servant	31 22	Mary Street Port Chalmers George Street Port Chalmers	6 mos One year	At the Residence of Mrs Lange George St	74/563	10 February 1874	Rev. James Maxwell
6	20 February 1874	Edward Coffey Mary C. Brian	Edward Coffey Mary O'Brien 💍 1874/12775	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	36 24	Sound Street Port Chalmers George Street Port Chalmers	3 mos 12 mos	At St Joseph's Church	2362	17 February 1874	Rev. Smiting Burnley

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).