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 337

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 December 1877 Registrar Charles Philip Ipson

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
247	13 December 1877	Frederick Overend Mary Ann Tricklebank	Frederick Overend Mary Ann Tricklebank 💍 1877/2424	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	27 19	Wellington Wellington	officiating 2 years	At the House of Mr. Young, Mairu Street	77/2425	Charles Tricklebank, Father	13 December 1877	Revd Alex Reid
248	13 December 1877	John Wolff Sofie Olsen formerly Sorensen	John Wolff Sophie Olsen 💍 1877/2406	Bachelor Widow	Coachpainter	41 39	Wellington Wellington	3 years 3 years	At the Registrar's Office, Wellington	77/2403		13 December 1877	Registrar of Marriages
249	13 December 1877	William Henry Dobson Ellen Rosoman Mounse		Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper Servant	24 19	Wellington Wellington	3 years 3 years	N. Catholic Chapel, Boulcott Street	77/2692	Thomas Falton	13 December 1877	Revd Mc Kearney
250	13 December 1877	William Hunt Lucy Burniston		Bachelor Spinster	M. Mariner	28 22	Wellington Wellington	2 years 10 months	At the Wesleyan Church, Manners Street			13 December 1877	Revd Alex Reid
251	14 December 1877	John Thomas Andrews Martha Watson	John Thomas Andrews Martha Watson 💍 1877/2448	Bachelor Spinster	Moulder Servant	22 20	Wellington Do	10 years 20 years	St. Peter's Church, Willis Street	77/2450		14 December 1877	The Ven ble Archdeacon Stock
252	18 December 1877	John Hollin Griffin Martha Louisa Biss	John Hollis Griffin Martha Louisa Biss 💍 1877/98	Bachelor Spinster	Miller	26 18	Wellington Wellington	3 days 5 months	Registrar's Office, Wellington	77/2404		18 December 1877	Registrar of Marriages

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).