1857 Intentions to Marry

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840369, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 13 2024

Page 138

District of Otago Quarter ending 31 December 1857

No	Date of Notice	Names and Surnames of Parties	BDM Match	Condition	Calling or Profession	Age	Dwelling Place	Length of Residence	Marriage Place	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
26	October 1857	Alexander Remie Ann Wilkie	Alexander Rennie Ann Wilkie 💍 1857/1891	Widower Spinster	Storekeeper	47 42	Dunedin do	6 years 5 years	At the residence of James Wilkie near Moray Place, Dunedin	17 Oct 1857	The Rev Thomas Burns
27	9 October 1857	James Henry Pearce Hannah Irving	James Henry Pearce Hannah Newing Wastie 💍 1857/1823	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	32 34	North-East Valley do	2 years 2 years	At the residence of James Henry Pearce, North East Valley	9 Oct 1857	The Rev John Albert Fenton
28	22 October 1857	George Cooper Jean Forrester	George Coupar Jane Forrester 💍 1857/1840	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	38 30	Taieri do	3 years 1 year	At the residence of William Stevenson, East Taieri	26 October 1857	The Rev William Will
29	16 November 1857	John Hill Mary Dixon	John Hill Mary Dickson 💍 1857/1897	Widower Widow	Cabinetmaker	41 42	Dunedin Halfway Bush	9 years 2 years	At the residence of James Marshall, Halfway Bush	Dec 3	The Rev Thomas Burns
30	21 November 1857	Arthur William Morris Jessie Mundie	Arthur William Morris Jessie Moodie 💍 1857/1894	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	31 23	Dunedin do	2 years 7 days	At the residence of James Mundie, Carisbrook	Dec 3	The Rev Thomas Burns
31	2 December 1857	James Wilkie Martha Smith	James Wilkie Bathia Smith 💍 1857/1900	Widower Spinster	Sailor	40 40	do do	6 years 3 days	At the residence of James Wilkie, Moray Place	Dec 23	The Rev Thomas Burns
32	5 December 1857	Robert Millar Georgina Gilroy	Robert Millar Georgina Gilroy 💍 1857/1826	Bachelor Widow	Blacksmith	30 31	do do	4 years 8 years	Within the Episcopal Church, Dunedin	Dec 21	The Rev John Albert Fenton
33	5 December 1857	William Young Millar Grace Inglis	William Young Millar Grace Inglis Sinclair 💍 1857/1829	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith	23 26	do do	4 years 8 years	Within the Episcopal Church, Dunedin	Dec 21	The Rev John Albert Fenton
34	7 December 1857	Alexander Dickson Helen Findlay	Alexander Dickson Helen Finley 💍 1857/1845	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	42 39	East Taieri Dunedin	9 years 7 days	At the residence of George Cranford, Dunedin	24 December 1857	The Rev Thomas Burns
35		Robert Stevenson Ursula Waters	Robert Stevenson Ursula Walters 💍 1857/1843	Bachelor Widow	Settler	26 23	East Taieri East Taieri	9 years	At the residence of James Cullen, East Taieri	21 Dec 1857	The Rev William Will
36	11 December 1857	John Jenkins Mary Ann Holland	John Jenkins Mary Ann Holland 💍 1857/1811	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer	21 20	Dunedin Mills		At the office of the Registrar	12 December 1857	The Registrar
37	12 December 1857	Frederick Jones Alice Margaret Robinson	Frederick Jones Alice Margaret Robinson Chapman 💍 1858/1402	Bachelor Spinster	Gentleman	21 23	Waikouaiti Goodwood	10 years 1 month	At the residence of William Jones, Goodwood.	12 Dec 1857	The Rev John Albert Fenton

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).