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 323

District of Masterton Quarter ending 30 September 1875 Registrar Holmes Crayne

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
47	13 July 1875	Lewis Martin Holmes Louisa Matilda Kielson	Lewis Martin Holmes Louisa Mathilda Nielson 💍 1875/1555	Bachelor Spinster	Draper	35 20	Masterton Masterton	3 months 3 months	Office of Registrar of Marriages Masterton	75/1628	Being no person in Colony authorised to give consent	20 July 1875	Holmes Crayne Registrar
48	4 August 1875	James Walker Louisa Jane Prentice	James Walker Louisa Jane Prentice 💍 1875/1846	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	29 20	Masterton West Masterton	8 years 16 years	Dwelling house of Mr Stephen Prentice	75/1875	Minors father	4 August 1875	Rev James McKee
49	18 September 1875	James Wickens Ellen Moore	James Wickens Ellen Moore 💍 1875/1925 James Wallace Eliza Moore 💍 1875/801	Bachelor Spinster	Baker domestic Servant	28 19 years 10 months	Masterton Masterton	12 months 10 months	St Matthews Church	75/2030	An orphan. no person in Colony to give consent	18 September 1875	Rev Amos Knell
50	21 September 1875	Frederick Henry Winter Elizabeth Nichols	Frederick Charles Henry Winter Elizabeth Nichols 💍 1875/1612	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	30 years 18 years 4 months	Manaia Manaia	14 days 5 years	Dwelling house of Mr John Shute	75/1414	Minors Guardian (Mr John Shute) & Grandmothers husband	21 September 1875	Rev John Law
51	27 September 1875	James Sankey Sophie Neilson	James Lankey Sophia Neilson 💍 1875/1554	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	38 years 22 years	Masterton Masterton	9 years 12 months	Office of Registrar of Marriages Masterton	75/1624		29 September 1875	Holmes Crayne Registrar

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).