Intentions to Marry, 1899 January-June

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840415, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington (now located in the National Library reading room), September 5 2025

1899 is bound in two volumes, January-June and July-December.

Page 322

District of Christchurch Quarter ending 31 March 1899 Registrar J M Warner

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
128	29 March 1899	Herbert Ernest Bacon Jane King	Herbert Ernest Lamb Jane King 💍 1899/3711	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer	27 30	Christchurch Christchurch	5 years 12 years	St Luke's Wesleyan Church, East Belt	99/3561		29 March 1899	Rev Z W Scott, Wesleyan
129	29 March 1899	William Lucas Sarah Sharp	William Moss Sarah Sharp 💍 1899/941	Widower Widow	Gardener	65 66	St Albans St Albans	3 years 12 years	House of Mrs S Cotton, Coopers Rd, St Albans	99/805		29 March 1899	Rev W Lee, Wesleyan
130	29 March 1899	Charles Edward Louis Sherman Beatrice Marion Ayres		Bachelor Spinster	Butcher Machinist	24 19	St Albans St Albans	17 years 5 years	House of Mr Sherman, Cranford Road	99/3185	Father	29 March 1899	Rev T Erwin, Presbyterian
131	30 March 1899	George de Crespigny Breton Sybil Robilliaud Aplin		Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	27 24	Christchurch Christchurch	5 days 5 days	Wesleyan Church, Durham Street, ChCh	99/7171		30 March 1899	Rev H R Ricole, Wesleyan
132	30 March 1899	Frederick George Addison Emma de Forrester Spencer		Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor	25 25	Christchurch	2 years 1 week	St Mark's Church, Opawa	99/2227		30 March 1899	Rev E G Castendy, Anglican
133	30 March 1899	Joseph Henry Brown Sarah Elizabeth Spratt	Joseph Henry Brown Sarah Elizabeth Gardner 💍 1899/2722	Bachelor Spinster	Grocer Domestic	29 22	St Albans St Albans	4 weeks 4 weeks	Church of Good Shepherd, Phillipstown	99/2788		30 March 1899	Rev H E Cither, Anglican
134	30 March 1899	Henry Endacott Saddler Ruth Parish		Bachelor Spinster	Saddler Domestic	28 22	Christchurch Linwood	11 years 1 week	Parsonage of St Saviour, Creek Road, Linwood	99/2156		30 March 1899	Rev J Orchard, Wesleyan

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).