Intentions to Marry, 1881

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840393, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, January 31 2025

Page 766

District of Lyttelton Quarter ending 31 December 1881

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
442	25 November 1881	William Henry Cunningham Elizabeth Harriet Smith	William Henry Cunningham Elizabeth Harriett Smith 💍 1881/2845	Bachelor Spinster	Steward	25 Years 19 Years	Lyttelton Lyttelton	21 days 3 days	Church of England Lyttelton	81/2898		December	Rev. J Townsend
443	29 November 1881	David George Patton Sarah Amy Fisher	David George Patton Dimond Sarah Amy Fisher 💍 1881/2846	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	26 Years 21 Years	Lyttelton Summer	26 Years 7 Years	Church of England Sumner	81/2899		November 29	Rev. Francis Knowles
444	1 December 1881	Edward John Queree Elizabeth Mintrom	Edward John Querce Elizabeth Mary Mintrom 💍 1881/2839	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith Servant	24 Years 23 Years	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 Years 8 Months	Wesleyan Church Durham Street Christchurch	81/2892		December	Rev. W. B. Marten
445	19 December 1881	Edward George Sykes Jessie Mary Chambers	Edward George Sykes Jessie Mary Chambers 💍 1881/2843	Bachelor Spinster	Painter	26 Years 24 Years	Lyttelton Lyttelton	3 days 20 Years	The house of Charles William Chambers Lyttelton	81/2894		December 19	Rev. W. B. Marten
446	23 December 1881	George Smith Jane Carton	George Smith Jane Carter 💍 1881/2842 George Smith Hannah Rebecca Carpenter 💍 1882/651 George Smith Henrietta Smith 💍 1881/2033	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	28 Years 20 Years	Lyttelton Lyttelton	7 Years 2 Years	The house of Charles Anderson South Gully Lyttelton	81/2895	Charles Anderson Step-father	December 23	Rev. W. B. Marten

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).