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 803

District of Unknown Quarter ending 1874

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
212	7 October 1874	George Smith Shea Ann Blair Austin	George Smith Skea Ann Blair Austen 💍 1874/13657	Widower Widow	Cook	50 years 40 years	Lawrence	one week at the house 13 years	At the house	2664		October 1874	Rev. John Menzies
213	25 October 1874	James Greeve Clemmie Maxwell Ferguson	James Grieve Annie Maxwell Ferguson 💍 1874/13660	Bachelor Spinster	Mason Servant	34 years 20 years	Residence at Mount	3 years 4 years	At the Residence of Mrs Porter	2665	Jane Porter, mother	23 October 1874	J H Cameron
214	11 November 1874	John Irelan Susan Kane	John Treloar Susan Kane 💍 1874/14011	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 years 21 years	[UNCLEAR]	11 months 7 days	At the Roman Catholic Chapel at Lawrence	2789		11 November 1874	Rev. William Larkins
215	13 November 1874	John Nixon Ann McCarty	John Nixon Annie McCarthy 💍 1874/14014	Bachelor Widow	Carpenter Servant	35 years 29 years	Lawrence Lawrence	10 years 3 months	At the Roman Catholic Chapel at Lawrence	74/2790		November 1874	Rev. William Larkin
216	8 December 1874	Joseph Bell Bertha Baillie	Joseph Bell Bertha Baillie 💍 1874/13684	Bachelor Widow	Hotel Keeper House Keeper	44 years Full Age	Lawrence	9 years 4 years	At the Masonic Hotel at Lawrence	2673		December 1874	Rev. William H Beck
217	22 December 1874	Andrew Bryson Ann Muir	Andrew Drysdale Ann Muir 💍 1874/11785	Bachelor Spinster	Carrier Servant	27 years 23 years	[UNCLEAR]	4 years 5 days	At the Residence of Mrs Muir	2018		December 1874	Rev. W H Beck
218	23 December 1874	William Palmer Mary Ann Murphy	William Palmers Mary Ann Murphy 💍 1874/13663	Bachelor Spinster	Sailor	27 years Full Age	Beaumont Beaumont	5 months 3 weeks	At the Office of the Registrar of Gabriels District	2666		23 December 1874	H J Abel Registrar of Gabriels District

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).