Intentions to Marry, 1877

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840389, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, April 16 2025

Page 303

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 March 1877 Registrar Alldinner

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Folio	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
48	12 March 1877	Thomas Pelham Ellen Shirley	Thomas Pelham Ellen Shirley 💍 1877/290	Bachelor Spinster	Pressman Domestic Servant	23 22	Wellington do	18 years 18 months	St Peter's Church, Willis Street Wellington	77/195	12 March 1877	Maurice Arch Stock
49	12 March 1877	Carlo Fossi Maria Mancini		Bachelor Spinster	Newton Cook	28 24	Wellington do	6 months 6 months	St Mary of the Angels, Boulcott Street Wellington		12 March 1877	Rev. I. P. O'Reilly
50	14 March 1877	Robert Cochrane Eliza Ladd	Robert Cochrane Eliza Ladd 💍 1877/287	Bachelor Spinster	Stevedore Dressmaker	40 41	Wellington do	4 years 2 years	House of Eliza Ladd, near Hill Street Wellington	77/192	14 March 1877	Rev. C. J. Byng
51	14 March 1877	Michael Marshall Eliza Daley	Michael Marshall Eliza Daley 💍 1877/1343	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	30 20	Wellington do	2 months 2 months	Church of Mary of the Angels, Boulcott Street Wellington	77/292	14 March 1877	Rev. M. J. Kearney
52	15 March 1877	Gerald Fitzmaurice Mary Smith	Gerald Fitzmaurice Lucilla Smith 💍 1877/350	Bachelor Spinster	Letter	33 20	The Long's White do	2 months 20 years	Registrar's Office, Wellington	77/231	15 March 1877	Registrar Wellington
53	16 March 1877	William Henry McCleland Emma Webber	William Henry McCleland Emma Webber 💍 1877/318	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker Servant	28 23	Wellington do	20 years 23 years	House of Rev. W. H. West, The Terrace Wellington	77/222	16 March 1877	Rev. W. H. West
54	22 March 1877	William Staples Frances Riley	William Staples Frances Riley 💍 1877/297	Bachelor Spinster	Storeman Servant	27 27	Wellington do	8 months 2 months	St Mark's, Adelaide Road Wellington	77/207	22 March 1877	Rev. Rd Coffey
55	22 March 1877	John Godber Jane Martin	John Golder Jane Martin 💍 1877/1350 John Wheeler Susan Martin 💍 1877/3059	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	28 21	Upper Hutt do	28 21	St Joseph's Church, Upper Hutt	77/246	22 March 1877	Rev. F. Yardley

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).