Intentions to Marry, 1875

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840387, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, May 16 2025.

This register is quite fragile and some of the pages are damaged or even missing.

Page 226

District of Wanganui Quarter ending 31 March 1875

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
9	3 March 1875	James Relph Susannah Smith	James Relph Susannah Smith 💍 1875/579 James Rankin Taylor Hannah Smith 💍 1875/409	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	21 19 years	Wanganui Wanganui	Two months Two months	In the English church	75/678	Declaration made that no person authorized by law is in the colony to give consent to her marriage	18 March 1875	Revd W. Tudor
10	5 March 1875	William Smith Catherine Darling Smith	William Smith Catherine Darling McCormack 💍 1875/3230	Bachelor Spinster	Store Keeper	24 30	Wanganui Wanganui	Two weeks Two months	English church	75/129	Frank Walpole Evans, guardian	5 March 1875	Revd B. R. Taylor
11	10 March 1875	Richard Openshaw Anne Hodgoon		Widower Widow	Grocer	48 27	Wanganui Wanganui	10 years Two months	Christchurch	75/677		10 March 1875	Revd W. Tudor
12	15 March 1875	Alexander Watt Williamson, Jane Patterson		Bachelor Spinster	Schoolmaster	25 24	Wanganui Inc. Line, Wanganui	3 days at Otahuhu Farm No. 2 Many years Line		75/465		15 March 1875	Revd John Elmsley
13	15 March 1875	John Splitt Emma Schultze		Bachelor Widow	Laborer	26 36	Wanganui Wanganui	3 weeks 10 weeks	Christchurch	75/30		15 March 1875	Revd B. R. Taylor
14	14 March 1875	Joseph Vincent Sarah Peapell	Joseph Vincent Sarah Peapell 💍 1875/3212	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	23 18	Waitotara Wanganui	4 years at residence 18 years of Mr Peapell Glasgow Street		75/35	Joseph Peapell, father	14 March 1875	Revd John Elmsley
15	15 March 1875	William Hearn George Foster, Sarah Johnston		Bachelor Spinster	Tobacconist	23 21	Wanganui Wanganui	3 days In Christchurch 6 years		75/680		29 March 1875	Revd W. Tudor
16	29 March 1875	John Maysmor Katherine Kenine Durie	John Maysmor Katharine Ann Durie 💍 1875/580	Bachelor Spinster	Store Keeper	32 years 29 years	Wanganui Wanganui	3 days In Christ Church Many years		75/699		29 March 1875	Revd W. Tudor

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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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).