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 414

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
100	21 March 1865	William moore mary Douglas	Wm Moore Mary Douglas 💍 1865/8576	Bachelor Spinster	mariner	29 yrs 19 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	1 week 2 weeks	In Knox Church Dunedin	1533	Duncan Dougla, father	21 March 1865	Revd. W. M. Stuart
101	21 March 1865	John Thomas Knight Terisa blues	John Thomas Knight Theresa Clues 💍 1865/8801	Bachelor Spinster	Plasterer	34 yrs 22 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	2 yrs 18 months	In the house of John Thomas Knight, Hanover Street Dunedin	1013		21 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns
102	24 March 1865	James Halls mary adams	James Walls Mary Adams 💍 1865/8258	Bachelor Spinster	carpenter	29 yrs 27 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	3 yrs 4 yrs	In the house of David Adams High Street Dunedin	1016		24 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns
103	25 March 1865	James Rodger agnes morrison	James Rodger Agnes Morrison 💍 1865/8579 James Tyrrell Jane Morrison 💍 1865/8180	Bachelor Spinster	carpenter	26 yrs 19 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	2 yrs 2 yrs	In the house of James Pittillo Maori Hill Dunedin	1534	no person to give consent	25 March 1865	Revd. W. M. Stuart
104	25 March 1865	Bernard Harvey Mary O'Conner	Bernard Harvey Mary O'Connor 💍 1865/8372	Bachelor Spinster	miner	30 yrs 26 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 2 yrs	In St. Joseph's Presbytery house Dunedin	1409		25 March 1865	Revd. W. Moreau
105	27 March 1865	John Robert James Eliza Salmon	Jno Robert James Eliza Salmon 💍 1865/8585	Bachelor Spinster	Agriculturist	28 yrs 22 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	9 months 15 months	In the manse of the Revd. Thomas Burns D.D. Dunedin	1536		27 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns
106	28 March 1865	alexander Brydie Euphemia Imrie	Alexander Brydie Euphemia Imrie 💍 1865/8804	Bachelor Spinster	miner	27 yrs 24 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	In the manse of the Rev. Thomas Burns D.D. Dunedin	1014		28 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns
107	28 March 1865	Alexander Tullis Agnes Trocks	Alexander Tullis Agnes Trocks 💍 1865/8813	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	25 yrs 29 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	1 yr 2 yrs	In the house of the Revd. Thomas Burns D.D. Dunedin	1018		28 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns
108	29 March 1865	John McLean Flora McDougall	John McKay Flora McDougall 💍 1865/8807	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	28 yrs 23 yrs	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 4 days	In the house of Mr. Fish Royal Terrace Dunedin	1015		29 March 1865	Revd. Thomas Burns

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).