Intentions to Marry, 1878

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840390, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, March 5 2025

Page 975

District of Lawrence Quarter ending 30 September 1878

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
273	10 July 1878	Richard Hancock Catharine Thomas	Richard Hancock Catherine Thomas 💍 1878/3193	Bachelor Spinster	Miner None	24 years 17 years	Munro Gully Munro Gully	3 years 6 years	At the House of Mr William Thomas, Munro Gully	78/3250	William Thomas, Father	July 10 1878	The Revd. John Menzies, Congl.
274	8 August 1878	Thomas Gillespie Robertson Jane Peters	Thomas Gillespie Robertson Jane Peters 💍 1878/3192	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer None	24 years 22 years	Lawrence Lawrence	16 years 1 year	At the House of Mr Thomas Peters, Lawrence	78/3249		August 8 1878	The Revd. John Menzies, Congl.
275	17 August 1878	George Macklay Isabella Ross	George MacKay Isabella Clark 💍 1878/3098 George Cooke Isabella Downes 💍 1878/2026	Bachelor Widow	Shepherd None	30 years 35 years	Grays Flat Lawrence	6 months 3 months	At the House of Mr Edward Lawson, Blue Spur	78/3143		August 17 1878	The Revd. Hugh Bowie, O.S.P.
276	10 September 1878	William Bloy Mary Julia Wedlake	William Bloy Mary Julia Wedluke 💍 1878/3197	Widower Spinster	Butcher [illegible]	28 years 19 years	Lawrence Munro Gully	11 years 4 years	At the House of Mr William Thomas, Munro Gully	78/3254	Miriam Thomas (formerly Wedlake), Mother	September 10 1878	The Revd. G. P. Beaumont, C of E
277	28 September 1878	Edward D'Olier Foote Emma Susan Pratt	Edmund D'Olier Foot Emma Susan Pratt 💍 1878/2294	Bachelor Spinster	Accountant [illegible]	33 years 19 years	Lawrence Lawrence	4 months One year	At the Residence of Mr. G. L. Pratt, Lawrence	78/2303	George L. Pratt, Father	September 28 1878	The Revd. Hugh Bowie, O.S.P.

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).