Intentions to Marry, 1882

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840394, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Carole at Archives NZ Wellington, April 16 2025

Page 211

District of Auckland Quarter ending 31 December 1882

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
480	4 December 1882	John White Hardie Anne Mary Todd	John White Hardie Anne May Todd 💍 1882/2797	Bachelor Spinster	Commission Agent Agent	43 33	Auckland Ponsonby	4 months 3 weeks	Church of St Paul	82/2692		4 December 1882	Revd C.M. Nelson M.A. Church of England
481	4 December 1882	William Dimmey Elizabeth Booth	William Dimery Elizabeth Booth 💍 1882/3366	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	25 21	Auckland Auckland	7 years 21 years	Franklin Road Primitive Methodist Church	82/3424		4 December 1882	Revd James Guy Primitive Methodist
482	4 December 1882	William Henry Potter Annie Davis	William Henry Potter Annie Davis 💍 1882/2657	Bachelor Spinster	Cook Servant	32 24	Inngan Auckland	6 years 5 years	Church of England	82/2674		4 December 1882	Revd H. S. Gould Church of England
483	5 December 1882	Theophilus Codlin Mary Ann Simpson	Theophilus Codlin Mary Ann Simpson 💍 1882/2656	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Servant	25 21	Auckland Auckland	14 months 2 years	Office of the Registrar of Marriages	82/2665		5 December 1882	J. Owen Lord Dep. Reg.
484	7 December 1882	Bains Thomas James Mellery Wilhelmina Rice	Gains Thomas James Melleney Wilhemina Price 💍 1882/2667	Bachelor Spinster	Builder	34 20	Auckland Auckland	18 months 20 years	Office of the Registrar of Marriages	82/2666	Mellery Josephine Price Mother	7 December 1882	J. Owen Lord Dep. Reg.
485	7 December 1882	Stewart Hughes Maria McConal Rogers	Stewart Hughes Maria McConah Rogers 💍 1882/3443	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Machinist	21 19	Freeman's Bay Newton	20 years 19 years	St James Presbyterian Church	82/3405	Jane Guilding Mother	7 December 1882	Revd R. F. Macdonald Presbyterian Church
486	8 December 1882	James Patterson Annie Wilson	James Patterson Annie Wilson 💍 1882/2799 James Ruston Frances Wilson 💍 1882/1502 David Chapman Annie Wilson 💍 1882/230	Bachelor Spinster	Fireman Domestic	23 21	Eden Crescent Onehunga	7 years 18 months	St Paul's Church Princes St	82/2694		8 December 1882	Revd C.M. Nelson M.A. Church of England

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 1898. More registers will be added when the Archives NZ Wellington reading room re-opens in September 2025.

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).