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 439

District of Dunedin Quarter ending Oct - Dec

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
288	14 November 1865	George Mcadie Catherine Manson	George McAdie Catherine Manson 💍 1865/8888	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	25 20	Dunedin Dunedin	4 days 1 week	In the manse of the Revd. Thomas Burns D.A. Dunedin	1643	No Person to give consent	14 November 1865	Rev. Thomas Burns D.A.
289	15 November 1865	Alexander Williamson Charlotte Thomson	Alexander Williamson Charlotte Thomson 💍 1865/8216	Bachelor Spinster	Farm Servant	28 23	Dunedin Dunedin	3 months 1 week	In the manse of the Revd. D. Meiklejohn Dunedin	1409		15 November 1865	Revd. D. Meiklejohn
290	15 November 1865	William Weeks Jane Somerville	William Weeks Jane Somerville 💍 1865/8213	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner	29 25	Dunedin Dunedin	3 yrs 3 months	In the manse of the Rev. D. Meiklejohn Dunedin	1408		15 November 1865	Rev. D. Meiklejohn
291	15 November 1865	John Maitland Jones Margaret McPherson	John Maitland Jones Margaret McPherson Proctor 💍 1865/8906	Bachelor Spinster	Bank Clerk	20 18	Dunedin Dunedin	7 months 7 months	In the house of James Farquharson Proctor - Stafford Street. Dunedin	1649	Jessie Jones, mother & James Farquharson Proctor, father	16 November 1865	Rev. J. Aldred
292	16 November 1865	John Duley Catherine Hoya	John Duley Catherine Floyd 💍 1865/8462	Bachelor Spinster	Kerryman	32 21	Dunedin Dunedin	1 week 1 week	In the Presbytery house St. Josephs church	1490		16 November 1865	Rev. D. Moreau
293	17 November 1865	Thomas Weeks Emma Thompson	Thomas Weeks Emma Thompson 💍 1865/8897 Thomas Allen Martha Thompson 💍 1865/5699	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	29 23	Dunedin Dunedin	3 yrs. 2 yrs.	In the manse of the Revd. Thomas Burns D.A. Dunedin	1646		5 December 1865	Rev. Thomas Burns D.A.
294	20 November 1865	Andrew Thomson Jane Elizabeth Dalgleish	Andrew Thomson Jane Elizabeth Dalgleish 💍 1865/8951	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	24 21	Port Chalmers Dunedin	4 yrs 13 days	In the house of Peter Hercus York Place Dunedin	1666		20 November 1865	Rev. Thomas Spencer Forsaith
295	21 November 1865	Colin Millengie Gordon Susan Milnissock	Colin McKenzie Gordon Susan McKissock 💍 1865/8738	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	35 21	Dunedin Dunedin	18 months 3 days	In the house of Robert Chapman Esq. Manor Place	1592		21 November 1865	Rev. W. M. Stuart
296	22 November 1865	Robert Alexander Margaret [UNCLEAR]		Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	28 27	Dunedin Dunedin	3 yrs. 4 days	In the house of William [UNCLEAR] Moray Place Dunedin	1414		22 November 1865	Revd. J. L. Parsons

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).