Intentions to Marry, 1900 January-June

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840417, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, September 12 2025

1900 is bound in two volumes, January-June and July-December.

Page 1028

District of Mount Benger Quarter ending 30 June 1900 Registrar Thomas Coop

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
206	2 April 1900	John Watt Emma Toms	John Watt Emma Toms 💍 1900/1548	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Domestic	28 years 26 years	Roxburgh Coal Creek Flat	Three days 26 years	At the house of Mr Toms	00/2622	2 April 1900	Rev T. A. Joughin
207	10 April 1900	Thomas Heatherall Margaret Richardson	Thomas Weatherall Margaret Richardson 💍 1900/1555	Bachelor Widow	Waggoner Domestic	25 years 30 years		Ten years 12 years	At the house of Mr Richardson	00/2624	10 April 1900	Rev James Delany
208	14 April 1900	Patrick Riordan Catherine McPhail	Patrick Riordan Catherine McPhail 💍 1900/1556	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Domestic	40 years 34 years	Mon Flat	24 years 14 years	At the house of Mr McPhail	00/2625	14 April 1900	Rev James Delany
209	18 April 1900	William Poulson Elizabeth Hiscock	William Poulson Elizabeth Hiscock 💍 1900/1554	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker Domestic	31 years 30 years	Roxburgh	Three days 20 years	At the Church of England	00/2628	18 April 1900	Rev C. C. Oldham
210	25 June 1900	William Wilkinson Mabel Winnie Towsey	William Wilkinson Mabel Winnie Towsey 💍 1900/1557	Bachelor Spinster	Rabbiter Domestic	21 years 23 years	Mt Benger Mt Benger	21 years 4 years	At the R. C. Church	00/2626	25 June 1900	Rev J. Geary

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).