Intentions to Marry, 1895 July-December

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840408, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Carole at Archives NZ Wellington, June 11 2025

1895 is bound in two volumes, January-June and July-December.

Page 451

District of Auckland Quarter ending 31 December 1895

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
420	18 November 1895	Malcolm McLean Annie Maria Pugh	Malcolm McSwan Annie Maria Pugh 💍 1895/181	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	25 27	Auckland Auckland	2 years 17 years	House of R.S. West, Khyber Pass	95/3133	18 November 1895	Rev. R.S. West, Presbyterian
421	18 November 1895	John Turnwald Lucas Ellen Geary		Bachelor Spinster	Stockman	29 28	Auckland Auckland	3 days 10 months	St. Benedict's Church, Auckland	95/3115	18 November 1895	Rev. G. De Groote, Roman Catholic
422	18 November 1895	George Edward Read Elizabeth Jane Warren	George Edward Read Elizabeth Jane Warren 💍 1895/2396	Bachelor Spinster	Jeweller	27 24	Auckland Auckland	8 years 24 years	St. Sepulchre's Church, Auckland	95/3822	18 November 1895	Archdeacon B.T. Dudley, Church of England
423	20 November 1895	Joseph Cole Hand Ellen Catherine Edward	Joseph Cole Ellen Catherine Edwards 💍 1895/1715	Bachelor Spinster	Mill Hand	26 22	Auckland Auckland	26 years 22 years	St. Patrick's Cathedral, Auckland	95/3095	20 November 1895	Rev. J. Kehoe, Roman Catholic
424	20 November 1895	William McManus Ellen Dorothia Anderton	William McManus Ellen O'Dowd 💍 1895/1712	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel Keeper	26 26	Auckland Auckland	17 years 16 years	St. Benedict's Church, Auckland	95/3116	20 November 1895	Rev. G. De Groote, Roman Catholic
425	21 November 1895	James Dalton Bull Annie Austin Pretty	James Walter Bull Annie Amelia Pretty 💍 1895/1743	Bachelor Spinster	Fruit Grower	27 27	Gisborne Milltown	10 years 4 years	Wesleyan Church, Pitt Street, Auckland	95/3152	21 November 1895	Rev. L.S. Prior, Wesleyan
426	21 November 1895	Archibald Douglas Burns Mary Duncan	Archibald Douglas Burns Mary Direen 💍 1895/1713	Bachelor Spinster	Draughtsman	35 30	Blenheim Blenheim	10 years 5 years	St. Patrick's Cathedral, Auckland	95/3093	21 November 1895	Rev. J. Kehoe, Roman Catholic

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).