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 121

District of Auckland Quarter ending 31 December 1875 Registrar John M. Hayland

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
368	16 December 1875	John Anderson Wilhelmina Rebecca Harding	John Anderson Wilhelmina Rebecca Hardinge 💍 1875/2612 John Anderson Minie Harold 💍 1876/344	Widower Spinster	Master Mariner	35 18	Victoria St Auckland Auckland	13 years 18 months	St. Matthews Church, Auckland	75/2596	Frederick Harding, Father	16 December 1875	Revd R. S. Hassard
369	14 December 1875	Charles Pounce Taylor Hettie Ethel Bernice Flude	Charles Poune Taylor Hettie Ethel Bernice Flude 💍 1876/303	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk Teacher	22 22	Upper Queen St Auckland Auckland	12 years 2 months	The dwelling house of Mr James Taylor, Auckland	75/2929		30 December 1875	Revd L. H. Crawford
370	14 December 1875	Edward John Funnell Elizabeth Ashby	Edward John Fennell Elizabeth Ashby 💍 1875/2803	Bachelor Spinster	Brick-maker Servant	33 26	Edgewood Cambridge	10 years 5 months	The Church of England at Cambridge	75/3059		14 December 1875	Revd William Calder
371	18 December 1875	Edward Buchanan Elizabeth Prosser	Edward Buchanan Elizabeth Prosser 💍 1875/2217	Bachelor Spinster	Optician	24 22	Auckland Auckland	14 years 9 years	Dwelling house of Mr Prosser, Liverpool St Auckland	75/2594		18 December 1875	Revd A. Reid
372	20 December 1875	William Hegarty Margaret Kelly	William Heggarty Margaret Kelly 💍 1875/2860	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Servant	34 20	Auckland Auckland	8 months 2 months	St. Patrick's Cathedral, Auckland	75/3113	No person in this Colony who has authority	20 December 1875	Revd W McDonald RC
373	20 December 1875	Alfred Leech Alice Scott Mall	Alfred Leech Alice Scott Hall 💍 1875/2215	Bachelor Spinster	Carver & [illegible]	27 34	Auckland Auckland	3 days 7 years	Dwelling house of Mr John Leech, Shortland Street Auckland	75/2395		20 December 1875	Revd H. J. Williams

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).