Intentions to Marry, 1898 January-June

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840413, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, June 27 2025

1898 is bound in two volumes, January-June and July-December.

Page 230

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 March 1898

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
21	21 January 1898	Percy James Henderson May Aubrey Valentine	Percy James Windsor May Aubrey Valentine 💍 1898/480	Bachelor Spinster	Photographer Photographer	25 26	Wellington Wellington	24 years 16 years	St. Peters Church, Wellington	98/525		21 January 1898	Rev. Allan Macdonald Johnson
22	21 January 1898	William Mathews Catherine Eyours	William Mathews Catherine Eyoun 💍 1898/530	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Labourer	33 22	Wellington Dunedin	6 months 22 years	Registrar's Office, Wellington	98/586		21 January 1898	F. W. Mansfield, Registrar
23	21 January 1898	Joseph Rogers Augusta Liggelkow	Joseph Rogers Augusta Siggelkow 💍 1898/532	Widower Widow	Plumber Plumber	53 40	Wellington Nelson	1 month 19 years	Registrar's Office, Wellington	98/587		21 January 1898	F. W. Mansfield, Registrar
24	24 January 1898	Herbert Stanley Meads Maude Madeline Carley	Herbert Stanley Meads Maude Madaline Carley 💍 1898/509	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Farmer	28 23	Hunterville Petone	28 years 23 years	House of Mrs. Carley, Britannia Street, Petone	98/562		25 January 1898	Rev. Alexander Thomson
25	24 January 1898	Wilhelm Morris Louisa Entwistle		Widower Spinster	Carpenter Carpenter	54 20	Wellington Wellington	20 years 6 years	Registrar's Office, Wellington	not issued	Father's consent refused	not issued
26	24 January 1898	Ah Chang Wong Lin Chang	Ah Chang Wong Sin Chang 💍 1898/451	Married Married	Storekeeper Storekeeper	34 21	Hawera China	6 years 21 years	Wesleyan Parsonage, Taranaki Street, Wellington	98/491		24 January 1898	Rev. William Baumber
27	24 January 1898	William Simson Christina Stewart Ballingall	William Timaru Christina Stewart Ballingall 💍 1898/2829	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk Clerk	29 30	Wellington Wellington	14 years 10 years	House of Mrs. Ballingall, 25 Bidwell Street, Wellington	98/497		24 January 1898	Rev. James Paterson
28	24 January 1898	John Souper Jeanne Neale	John Souper Jeanne Neale 💍 1898/481	Bachelor Spinster	Steward Steward	26 27	S.S. Tutanaikai Wellington	12 years 13 years	St. Peters Church, Wellington	98/526		24 January 1898	Rev. Allan Macdonald Johnson
29	25 January 1898	George Thomas Wright Agnes Ann Taylor	George Thomas Wright Agnes Ann Taylor 💍 1898/510	Bachelor Spinster	Fellmonger Fellmonger	22 20	Petone Petone	2 years 5 years	Church of Christ, Disraeli Street, Wellington	98/563	David Taylor, father	25 January 1898	W. Frank Hales
30	25 January 1898	Hugh Lamont Greer Mary Le Grange	Hugh Lamont Greer Mary Le Grange 💍 1898/518	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Labourer	29 26	Johnsonville Wellington	5 years 1 year	St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Wellington	98/550		25 January 1898	Rev. Thomas Henry Sprott

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).