1865 Intentions to Marry

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840377, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 406

District of Dunedin Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
28	23 January 1865	John Morris Amelia Lehane	John Lehane Amelia Lehane 💍 1865/4028	Bachelor Spinster	Mill Sawyer	34 25	Dunedin Dunedin	3yrs 5yrs	In the house of John B. Morris	4655		23 January 1865	Revd J. Aldred
29	25 January 1865	John Firdwood Ann Hemp		Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	26 23	Dunedin Dunedin	2yrs 2 yrs	In the house of Julius Albert	1572		25 January 1865	Revd D. M. Stuart
30	26 January 1865	John Henry Bunee Matilda Anna Lockay	John Henry Bunce Matilda Ann Lecky 💍 1865/8993	Bachelor Spinster	Plumber	31 17	Dunedin Dunedin	3 yrs 2 yrs	In the Church Dunedin	1681	Alexander Lockay, Father	26 January 1865	Revd C. J. Edwards
31	26 January 1865	James Herlihy Mary Moran	James Herlihy Mary Moran 💍 1865/8333	Bachelor Spinster	Dealer	28 22	Dunedin Dunedin	1 week 2 yrs	In St. Joseph's Chapel Dunedin	1446		26 January 1865	Revd. W. Moreau
32	26 January 1865	William Havers Mary Barr	William Chambers Mary Quaid 💍 1865/7895	Widower Widow	Gardener	58 47	Dunedin Dunedin	6 yrs 18 months	In the house of William Havers	511		18 February 1865	W. M. Stuart
33	27 January 1865	Daniel McLeod Margaret McKay	Daniel McLeod Margaret McKay 💍 1865/8519	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	26 23	Dunedin Dunedin	4 weeks 4 yrs	In Knox Church Dunedin	1574		27 January 1865	W. M. Stuart
34	27 January 1865	John Blair Martha Dougall	John Blair Martha Dougall 💍 1865/9256	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	29 19	Green Island Tokomairiro District	14 yrs 14 yrs	In the Rev. James Kirkland's	1793		27 January 1865	James Kirkland
35	28 January 1865	William Seed Betty Sally Bummin	Wm Seed Betty Sally Cummin 💍 1865/8516	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	25 24	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 6 days	In the house of the Rev. W. M. Stuart	1573		28 January 1865	Revd W. M. Stuart
36	28 January 1865	Peter Jones Mary Freeny	Peter Jones Mary Feeny 💍 1865/8336 James Jones Mary Parcell 💍 1865/4150	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	24 20	Dunedin Dunedin	2 yrs 18 months	In St. Joseph's Chapel Dunedin	1447	William Freeny, Father	28 January 1865	Revd. W. Moreau

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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Attribution: This image was digitised by Archives NZ Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga and is republished here under CC BY. It has been cropped and rotated for convenience.

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).