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 422

District of Dunedin Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
155	7 June 1865	John Shennan Eleanor Isabella Robertson	Jno Shennan Eleanor Isabella Robertson 💍 1865/8627	Bachelor Spinster	Draper	23 23	Oamaru Dunedin	2 yrs 1 1/2 yrs	In the house of John M. Bain Pelichet Bay Dunedin	1557		7 June 1865	Revd. D. M. Stuart
156	8 June 1865	James Gilberty Margaret Bain	James Gilbert Simmer Margaret Bain 💍 1865/8936	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	28 23	Dunedin Dunedin	3 1/2 yrs 5 yrs	In the house of Jacob Eckhoff Lee street Dunedin	1660		June 8 1865	Revd. J. Aldred
157	8 June 1865	John Wrightson Isabella MacAulay	John Wrightson Isabella Macaulay 💍 1865/8273	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	31 24	Dunedin Dunedin	8 days 8 days	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	1426		June 8 1865	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin
158	9 June 1865	John M. Meen Jane Reid	John McKeen Jane Reid 💍 1865/8828	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	25 24	Blueskin Dunedin	6 months 3 days	In the house of Mrs Walker Hanover street [UNCLEAR] of Castle Street Dunedin	1623		June 9 1865	Rev. Thomas Burns D.D.
159	9 June 1865	Lewis Matheson Mary Ogilvie	Lewis Mathieson Mary Ogilvie 💍 1865/6533	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	27 26	Dunedin Dunedin	4 yrs 18 months	In Knox Church Dunedin	1554		June 9 1865	Revd. D. M. Stuart
160	12 June 1865	John McMillan Flora McInnes	John McMillan Flora McInnes 💍 1865/8636	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	34 30	Wakari Dunedin	3 yrs 1 yr	In the house of Donald Cameron Wakari	1555		June 12 1865	Revd. D. M. Stuart
161	13 June 1865	Alfred Hellyer Margaret Mitchell	Alfred Hellyer Margaret Mitchell 💍 1865/8132	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	23 16	Dunedin Dunedin	4 yrs 2 yrs	In St. Paul's Church Dunedin	1378	Belinda Richardson (formerly Mitchell) Sister	June 13 1865	Revd. E. G. Edwards
162	14 June 1865	Alexander Brown Jane Freeman	Alexander Brown Jane Freeman 💍 1865/8831	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	32 20	Green Island Green Island	6 yrs 3 yrs	In the Manse of the Revd. Thomas Burns D.D. Dunedin	1624	William Freeman Father	June 14 1865	Rev. Thomas Burns
163	14 June 1865	Clements Jones Mary Shackell	Clements Jones Mary Shackell 💍 1865/8639	Bachelor Spinster	Stationer	37 39	Dunedin Wakari	2 1/2 yrs 2 yrs	In the house of J. S. Forsaith Wakari	1556		June 14 1865	Revd. D. M. Stuart

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).