Intentions to Marry, 1894

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840406, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, June 6 2025

Page 880

District of Auckland Quarter ending 30 September 1894

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
373	12 September 1894	Edmund Clifton Georgina Kingwell Binney	Edmund Clifton Georgina Kingswell Binney 💍 1894/2520	Widower Spinster	Civil Servant Servant	47 27	Auckland Auckland	4 years 25 years	St. Sepulchre Church	94/2542		12 September 1894	Ven. Arch. B. T. Dudley, Church of England
374	13 September 1894	Andrew John Robertson Louisa Elizabeth Goddard	Andrew John Robertson Elizabeth Louisa Goddard 💍 1894/2516	Bachelor Spinster	Baker	27 20	Arch Hill Arch Hill	2 years 4 years	House of S. H. Lyons, Registrar	94/2537	Louisa Goddard, mother	13 September 1894	Rev. T. Warner, Congregational Minister
375	14 September 1894	John Emelie Reid Esther Amelia Young	John Emslie Reid Esther Amelia Young 💍 1894/2104	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	32 27	Wanganui Wanganui	32 years 15 months	Registrar's Office	94/2203		14 September 1894	S. H. Lyons, Registrar
376	14 September 1894	John Gilmour Wright Mabel Jane Richmond	John Gilmour Mabel Jane Wright Richmond 💍 1894/3907	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	27 22	Mount Eden Auckland	2 years 22 years	Church of England, St. Paul's	94/4906		14 September 1894	Rev. L. Fritz Gerald, Church of England
377	14 September 1894	John William Smith Mary Jane Skelton	John William Smith Mary Jane Stanton 💍 1894/2969 James William Smith Mary Jane Tidswell 💍 1895/2878 William Smith Mary Shepperson 💍 1894/2501	Bachelor Spinster	Letter Carrier	28 25	Auckland Auckland	11 years 25 years	House of Registrar, Randolph Street, Newton	94/2963		14 September 1894	Rev. C. E. Ward, Primitive Methodist
378	15 September 1894	John Spencer McDermott Mary Ann Thirsten		Bachelor Spinster	Master Mariner	36 26	Panmure Panmure	12 years 26 years	St. Benedict's Church	94/2932		15 September 1894	Rev. J. C. Downey, Roman Catholic
379	17 September 1894	Nathan Barton Leaning Edith Maria Quinton	Nathan Barton Edith Maria Leaning 💍 1894/2105	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker	22 21	Auckland Auckland	22 years 15 years	Registrar's Office	94/2204		17 September 1894	S. H. Lyons, Registrar

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).