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 387

District of Picton Quarter ending 30 June 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
121	4 April 1875	George Bartlett Edith Jessie Beauchamp	George Bartlett Edith Jessie Beauchamp 💍 1875/808	Bachelor Spinster	Engin Driver Servant	27 18	Picton Picton	1 year 11 years	Register Office Picton	75/849	M.T. Beauchamp, Mother	4 April 1875	James Alexander, Registrar
122	4 May 1875	Charles James Gastine Greenlaw Mary Elizabeth Maud Hawk	Charles James Gastine Greenlaw Mary Elizabeth Maud Hawk 💍 1875/21	Bachelor Spinster	Gentleman	41 21	Picton Picton	4 Days 8 years	Church of Holy Trinity, Picton	75/845		4 May 1875	Rev William Ronaldson, Picton
123	15 May 1875	Henry Hilton Elizabeth Craff	Henry Hilton Elizabeth Cragg 💍 1875/804	Bachelor Spinster	Tin-smith	24 22	Picton Picton	9 years 9 years	Church of Holy Trinity, Picton	75/846		15 May 1875	Rev William Ronaldson, Picton
124	31 May 1875	Denis O'Sullivan Elizabeth Ann Happin	Denis O'Sullivan Elisabeth Ann Higgin 💍 1875/937 Denis O'Sullivan Mary Jane Hions 💍 1875/917	Bachelor Spinster	Sawmiller	26 24	Picton Road Picton	11 years 15 months	At the Residence of John O'Sullivan Sen. Picton Road	75/1050		31 May 1875	Rev Father Brent, Picton
125	3 June 1875	William Parfit Charlotte Williams	William Parfit Charlotte Williams 💍 1875/806	Bachelor Spinster	Sawmiller	31 28	Picton Road Picton Road	3 months 2 weeks	St. John's Church Picton Road	75/844		3 June 1875	Rev William Ronaldson, Picton
126	13 June 1875	George Cate Kezia Kempthorne	George Cate Kezia Kempthorne 💍 1875/807	Bachelor Widow	Labourer Servant	32 29	Picton Picton	1 year 6 months	Register Office Picton	75/848		13 June 1875	James Alexander, Registrar
127	15 June 1875	William Winterburn Jane Coleman	William Whiteman Jane Coleman 💍 1875/1797	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	21 19	The Grove The Grove	2 years 15 years	At the Residence of Jas Coleman, the Grove	75/837	Jas Coleman, Mother	15 June 1875	The Rev W. Ronaldson, Picton

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).