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 298

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 March 1877 Registrar [illegible]

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
9	9 January 1877	Alexander Hunter Bach Elizabeth Dew	Alexander Hunter Elizabeth Dew 💍 1877/321	Bachelor Widow	Labourer	30 36	Wainuiomata The Lower Hutt	6 months 20 years	Registrar's Office Wellington	77/225		9 January 1877	Registrar Wellington
10	9 January 1877	Thomas Armstrong Bach Emma Elizabeth Will	Thomas Armstrong Emma Elizabeth Silk 💍 1877/325	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	24 21	Wellington do	6 months 16 months	House of Revd John Muir Woolcombe Street Wellington	77/206		9 January 1877	Revd John Muir
11	10 January 1877	Thomas William Cavadull Bach Amy Laura Knight	Thomas William Caverill Amy Laura Knight 💍 1877/311	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	27 17	The Lower Hutt do	27 years do	House of Revd Wm Overhill The Lower Hutt	77/214	Declaration of Colony	10 January 1877	Revd Jas Paterson
12	10 January 1877	Arthur Shield Bach Kate Gleeson	Arthur Shield Kate Gleeson 💍 1877/293	Bachelor Spinster	Shopkeeper	33 20	Ohariu Bay bottom of Wellington Wellington	4 days 12 months	St Mark's Adelaide Road Wellington	77/224	No one in Colony	10 January 1877	Revd R Coffey
13	13 January 1877	Edmund Murphy Bach Julia England	Edward Murphy Julia England 💍 1877/330	Bachelor Spinster	Jockey	22 19	The Lower Hutt do	12 months 17 years	Registrar's Office Wellington	77/227	Consent of Father and Charles England	13 January 1877	Registrar Wellington
14	12 January 1877	John Inglis Bach Alice Eliza Featherston Styles	John Ingles Alice Eliza Featherston Styles 💍 1877/326	Bachelor Spinster	Waiter	21 19	Wellington do	3 days 19 years	House of Moleprobith Wellington	77/209	Emma Styles, Mother	12 January 1877	Revd John Muir
15	16 January 1877	John O'Connor Bach Agnes Whitmore	John O'Connor Lizzie Whitmore 💍 1877/341	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Cook	30 30	Wellington do	2 years 2 years	Registrar's Office Wellington	77/228		16 January 1877	Registrar Wellington

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).