Intentions to Marry, 1890

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840402, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, May 23 2025

Page 1382

District of Nelson Quarter ending 31 December 1890 Registrar Thos. Nation

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
55	22 December 1890	William Thomas Andrew Ida Both	William Thomas Andrew Ida Cobb 💍 1891/3530	Widower Spinster	Carrier Servant	38 19	Trafalgar Street, Nelson Stoke	3 days 3 weeks	Residence of Richard Andrew		No person resident in the Colony having authority	Entry transferred to Sheet for March Quarter 1891
56	22 December 1890	Martin Staples Smith Minnie Davies	Martin Staples Smith Minnie Davies 💍 1890/3120	Bachelor Spinster	Machinist Servant	24 24	Bridge Street, Nelson Grove Street, Nelson	4 years 3 years	Wesleyan Church	90/3319		22 December 1890	Rev. Francis Whitmore Britt, Wesleyan Church
57	22 December 1890	Ernest Edward Boyes Jane Elizabeth Lucre	Edward Ernest Boyes Jane Elizabeth Lucre 💍 1890/3130	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher Cook	24 23	Bridge Street, Nelson Waimea Road, Nelson	3 years 23 years	All Saints Church	90/3311		22 December 1890	Rev. Fred Wm. Chatterton, Church of England
58	22 December 1890	Charles White Mary Hargreaves	Charles White Mary Jane Hargreaves 💍 1890/3121	Bachelor Spinster	Saddler Nil	25 25	Bridge Street, Nelson Cambria Street, Nelson	25 years 25 years	Residence of Wm Woolford, Cambria Street, Nelson	90/3320		22 December 1890	Rev. John Pratt Kempthorne, Church of England
59	23 December 1890	Frederick William Chatterton Anne Hill	Frederick William Chatterton Anne Hill 💍 1890/3545	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk in Holy Orders Nil	30 36	Vanguard Street, Nelson Nelson	2 years 1 week	Bishopdale Chapel	90/3811		23 December 1890	Rev. Charles Olwir Mules, Church of England
60	29 December 1890	Alfred Augustus Grace Amelia Adelaide Harriet Jennings	Alfred Augustus Grace Amelia Adelaide Harriet Jennings 💍 1890/3125	Bachelor Spinster	Schoolmaster Nil	23 20	Washington Valley, Nelson Washington Valley, Nelson	3 years 10 years	Christchurch	90/3325	Maria Jane Jennings, mother.	29 December 1890	Rev. John Pratt Kempthorne, 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 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).