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 441

District of Buller 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
163	18 January 1875	William Humfrey Elizabeth Lea	William Burrows Elizabeth Lee 💍 1875/521 William Hopper Elizabeth Lowe 💍 1875/2732 William Hinde Elizabeth May 💍 1875/2439 William Hull Elizabeth Putman 💍 1875/910 William Stacey Elizabeth Couch 💍 1876/1483 William Hart Elizabeth Young 💍 1875/1023 William Pearce Elizabeth Kelly 💍 1875/2726 William Hagan Elizabeth Jones 💍 1875/2537 William Smith Elizabeth Cook 💍 1876/302 William Carter Elizabeth Harvey 💍 1876/455 William Percival Elizabeth Best 💍 1875/2677 William Agnew Elizabeth Hardy 💍 1875/2538 William Sloan Elizabeth McGee 💍 1875/1494 William McIlroy Elizabeth Collins 💍 1875/1629 William Hogan Elizabeth Stanley 💍 1875/2058 William Welbourne Elizabeth Ward 💍 1875/678 William Joseph O'Brien Elizabeth Ryan 💍 1876/509 William Moorey Elizabeth Mary Douglas 💍 1875/3166 William Hollern Elizabeth Jane Dale 💍 1875/541 William Luscombe Elizabeth Hinches 💍 1875/2020	Widower Widow	Labourer	64 54	Westport Westport	18 months 18 months	United Free Church, Westport	75/5403		18 January 1875	Rev. Robert Taylor
164	8 February 1875	Joseph Frank Mary Eliza Hinchow		Bachelor Widow	Blacksmith	39 34	Westport Westport	4 years	Street Church, Charleston	75/5404		8 February 1875	Rev. Thomas Walsh
165	15 March 1875	George Green Catherine Cregan	George Green Catherine Cregan 💍 1875/358	Bachelor Widow	Miner	44 38	Westport Westport	4 months 4 months	Registrar's Office, Westport	75/1394		15 March 1875	W.S. Humfrey, Registrar
166	29 March 1875	John Somers Annie Lizetta Groves	John Stephen Somers Annie Lesetti Groves 💍 1875/454	Bachelor Spinster	Baker	20 21	Westport Westport	3 months 4 months	Roman Catholic Church, Westport	75/499	No person having authority to give consent in New Zealand	29 March 1875	Rev. Thomas Walsh
167	31 March 1875	Henry Thomas Keely Mary Ann Callum	Henry Thomas Theely Mary McCallum 💍 1875/623 Henry Charles Davis Mary Ann Collins 💍 1876/663	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	24 20	Westport Westport	7 days 7 days	St. John's Church, Westport	75/400	Father of minor	31 March 1875	Rev. George Henry Johnstone

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).