Intentions to Marry, 1891

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840403, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Carole and Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, May 28 2025

A few pages are missing due to focus issues.

The Archives NZ CSV index has recorded pages 765, 767 and 769 incorrectly as 795, 797 and 796.

Page 581

District of Wairau Quarter ending 30 September 1891

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
13	29 July 1891	Blearles Sayless Rose Ellen Reid	Charles Eyles Rose Helen Reid 💍 1891/1495	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	30 years 20 years	Blenheim Blenheim	30 years 20 years	The Registrar of Marriages Office, Blenheim	91/2364	Donald Nicholls, mother	29 July 1891	The Registrar of Marriages, Blenheim
14	2 September 1891	John Henry Andrell Mary Jane Morse	John Henry Andrell Mary Jane Morse 💍 1891/1496	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	23 years 17 years	Grose Town Grose Town	23 years 15 years	The Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Blenheim	91/2365	Rose Reid, in the Colony, and consent to marriage, Blenheim	16 September 1891	The Registrar of Marriages, Blenheim
15	8 September 1891	David Greig Martha Anna O'Donnell	David Greig Martha Ann O'Donnell 💍 1891/1516	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor Domestic Servant	24 years 21 years	Dillons Point Road Grove Road, Blenheim	24 years about 5 years	The House of Mr O'Donnell, Grove Road, Blenheim	91/2361		8 September 1891	Revd. Henry Bull
16	14 September 1891	Willie Davies Rice Mary Ann Gifford	Willie Davies Pike Mary Ann Gifford 💍 1891/1517	Bachelor Spinster	Dairyman	28 years 21 years	The Laurels, Blenheim Spring Creek	27 years 21 years	The House of Mr. Isaac Gifford, Spring Creek	91/2362		14 September 1891	Revd. Henry Bull
17	28 September 1891	James Bree Gertrude Annie Allen	James Bree Gertrude Annie Allen 💍 1891/1518	Bachelor Spinster	Police Constable	32 years 18 years	Blenheim Blenheim	about 3 years 13 years	Roman Catholic Church, Blenheim	91/2363	John Allen, father	28 September 1891	Very Revd. Patrick Kerrigan

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).