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 1469

District of Auckland Quarter ending 31 March 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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
111	16 March 1891	Henry Hillock Esther May	Henry Niblock Esther May 💍 1891/3381	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	29 33	Auckland Epsom	7 yrs 3 yrs	Dwelling House, York Street, Parnell	91/114	16 March 1891	Rev. E. Best, Wesleyan
112	16 March 1891	Daniel Davidson Kitty Faulkner	Daniel Davidson Kitty Faulkner 💍 1891/3029	Bachelor Spinster	Setter	28 26	Parua Bay Parua Bay	5 yrs 26 yrs	Church of St. James, Wellington	91/81	16 March 1891	Rev. R. T. Maclean, Presbyterian
113	17 March 1891	Hugh Bullen Elizabeth Beech		Bachelor Spinster	Barrister-at-Law	25 22	Parnell Parnell	25 yrs 18 mos	Church of St. Mary, Parnell	91/922	17 March 1891	Rev. Isaac Riching, Ch. of England
114	18 March 1891	Thomas Testing Harriet Georgina	Thomas Festing Newcombe Harriet George 💍 1891/3786 Thomas Benton Harriet Fry 💍 1892/460	Bachelor Spinster	Teacher	33 25	Newton Auckland	3 yrs 20 yrs	Church of St. Sepulchre, Auckland	91/967	18 March 1891	Rev. J. Farley, Ch. of England
115	19 March 1891	Percy Clifton Langton		Bachelor Spinster	Butcher	25 25	Auckland Auckland	6 yrs 25 yrs	Registrar's Office, Auckland	91/160	19 March 1891	J. Owen, Registrar
116	20 March 1891	Donald Milliken Emily Jane Judge		Bachelor Spinster	Painter	26 24	Parnell Parnell	7 yrs 24 yrs	Church of St. John the Baptist, Parnell	91/1030	20 March 1891	Rev. J. McMillan, R. Catholic
117	21 March 1891	George Tarplee Margaret Miller	George White Margaret Walker 💍 1891/1612 George Green Margaret Bartley 💍 1892/135 George Hawkes Margaret Laidlaw 💍 1891/1847 George Farquhar Wilson Margaret Melles 💍 1891/3282	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	29 25	Ponsonby Parnell	2 yrs 25 yrs	Registrar's Office, Auckland	91/161	21 March 1891	J. Owen, Registrar
118	23 March 1891	Horace Beech Elizabeth Read		Bachelor Spinster	Coach Builder	22 22	Ponsonby Parnell	22 yrs 22 yrs	Church of St. Mary, Parnell	91/1956	25 March 1891	Rev. Isaac Riching, Ch. 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 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).