Intentions to Marry, 1898 July-December

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840414, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Carole at Archives NZ Wellington, June 27 2025

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

Page 712

District of Wellington Quarter ending 31 December 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
446	5 December 1898	Mark Scoth Mildred Perry	Mark Scott Junr Mildred Percy 💍 1898/4792	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel Assistant	23 21	Rangiora Rangiora	4 years 5 years	St. Johns Church, Wellington	98/4290		5 December 1898	Reverend Jas Paterson
447	5 December 1898	William Clisby Alice Emily Barnes	William Clisby Alice Emily Barnes 💍 1898/4585	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	27 26	Wellington Wellington	25 months 23 months	Registrar's Office, Wellington	See No. 448		5 December 1898	Registrar
448	6 December 1898	William Clisby Alice Emily Barnes	William Clisby Alice Emily Barnes 💍 1898/4585	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Dressmaker	27 26	Wellington Wellington	25 years 23 years	Roman Catholic Church, Boulcott St, Wellington	98/4331		6 December 1898	Reverend M. Ainsworth
449	6 December 1898	Frederick Edmund Harding Bertha Hoggard	Fredrick Edmund Warden Gowing Bertha Hoggard 💍 1898/2859	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	32 32	Wellington Wellington	10 years 32 years	Private residence of Mr. M. Gowing, 32 Boulcott St, Wellington	98/4980		6 December 1898	Reverend C. L. G. Gowing
450	6 December 1898	Thomas Aaron Hughes Mary O'Halloran	Thomas Aaron Hughes Mary O'Halloran 💍 1898/4586 George Croxford Mary O'Halloran 💍 1898/4132	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	23 19	Wellington Wellington	2 years 9 months	St. Mary's of the Angels Church, Boulcott St, Wellington	98/4332	No person in Colony to give consent	20 December 1898	Reverend Thos De Toy
451	6 December 1898	Frederick William Moore Ellen McLean	Frederick William Moore Ellen Nelson 💍 1898/4803	Bachelor Widow	Storekeeper Storekeeper	30 33	Wellington Wellington	6 years 13 years	Residence of Mr. J. McLean, Wellington	98/4278		6 December 1898	Reverend J. K. Elliott
452	7 December 1898	George Frederick Hudson Janet Harriet Cole	George Frederick Hudson Janet Harriet Cole 💍 1898/4549	Bachelor Spinster	Fellmonger	28 26	Wellington Wellington	9 years 9 years	St. Peter's Church, Wellington	98/4299		7 December 1898	Reverend W. C. Waters
453	7 December 1898	John David Mills Georgina Fullford	John David Mills Georgina Fullford 💍 1898/4568	Widower Spinster	Labourer	31 22	Wellington Wellington	6 years 21 years	Salvation Army Barracks, Newtown Road, Wellington	98/4338		7 December 1898	Major Joseph Birkenshaw
454	9 December 1898	George Home Lily Rose Wade	George Home Lily Ross Wade 💍 1898/5073	Bachelor Spinster		29 29	New Plymouth Luccard, Cheshire, England	7 weeks 18 years	St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Wellington	98/4988		9 December 1898	Reverend T. H. Sprott
455	12 December 1898	David Ross Constance Helena Taylor	David Ross Constance Helene Taylor 💍 1898/4804	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	31 20	Wellington Wellington	4 years 2 years	Residence of Mr. M. C. Taylor, 56 Kent Terrace, Wellington	98/4279	Mary Cairns Taylor, Mother	12 December 1898	Reverend J. K. Elliott

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).