Intentions to Marry, 1863

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840375, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke Howison at Archives NZ Wellington, December 4 2024

Page 356

District of Dunedin Quarter ending 31 December 1863

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
351	16 November 1863	Edward Wignall Elizabeth McLaren Reid	Edward Wignall Elizabeth McLaren Reid 💍 1863/4890	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	30 24	Port Chalmers Port Chalmers	4 weeks 14 weeks	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	1122		16 November 1863	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin
352	20 November 1863	John Grong Agnes Rudick	John Craig Agnes Rudick 💍 1863/4914	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	34 25	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	1131		20 November 1863	Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin
353	20 November 1863	Robert Brown Jenkinson Jessie Grayden	"Not [married] in this quarter"	Bachelor Widow	Carpenter	28 26	Dunedin Dunedin	3 years 3 years	In the house of Rev Dr Thomas Burn, Dunedin	1279/1864		20 November 1863	Rev. Dr. Thomas Burn
354	20 November 1863	William Hepburn Margaret Ross	Wm Hepburn Margaret Ross 💍 1863/4923	Bachelor Widow	Auctioneer	29 24	Wakari Wakari	13 years 14 years	In the house of Margaret Ross, Wakari	1134		20 November 1863	Rev. B. M. Stewart
355	23 November 1863	William Woods Bridget Mahar	William Woods Bridget Mahar 💍 1863/4917	Bachelor Spinster	Carrier	23 19	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	1132	No person entitled to give consent	23 November 1863	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin
356	23 November 1863	Maurice Spillane Ellen Nixon	Maurice Spillane Ellen Nixon 💍 1863/4920	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	24 23	Dunedin Dunedin	8 days 18 months	In the Roman Catholic Chapel, Dunedin	1133		23 November 1863	Revd. D. Moreau
357	25 November 1863	Henry Filby Pizey Annie Maria Roberts		Bachelor Spinster	Bank Clerk	26 21	Dunedin Dunedin	15 months 3 days	In the Episcopal Church, Dunedin	1136		25 November 1863	Rev. E. G. Edwards
358	24 November 1863	John McNeill Hellen Ogilvie Lindsay	John McNeill Helen Ogilvie Lindsay 💍 1863/5566	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	23 21	Dunedin Dunedin	5 years 9 months	In the house of George Ross, Richard Street, Dunedin	974		24 November 1863	Rev. Donald Meiklyon
359	24 November 1863	Thomas Thornton Mary Gharnock	Thomas Thornton Mary Charnock 💍 1863/4932	Bachelor Widow	Seaman	26 30	Port Chalmers Port Chalmers	10 months 6 days	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	1137		24 November 1863	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin

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 1894. More registers will be added as the project continues.

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).