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 468

District of Tokomairiro 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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
94	5 January 1865	Henry Francis May Matilda Sarah Johnston	Henry Francis May Matilda Sarah Johnson 💍 1865/9391	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper Housekeeper	39 30	Tokomairiro Tokomairiro	4 Days 4 Days	English Church Tokomairiro	1821	5 January 1865	Rev. R. L. Stanford
95	5 January 1865	Peter Campbell Elizabeth Matthews	Peter Campbell Elizabeth Matthew 💍 1865/9040	Widower Spinster	Boatman Servant	50 33	Taiori Beach Tokomairiro Taiori Ferry Tokomairiro	3 years 7 Months	In the House of Mrs McMillan Waihola Tokomairiro	1698	5 January 1865	Rev. John Allan
96	28 January 1865	David Chalmers Rebecca Black	David Chalmers Rebecca Black 💍 1865/9616	Bachelor Spinster	farmer Servant	26 22	Tokomairiro Tokomairiro	5 1/2 years 2 years	In the House of Mr Lewis Dunston Tokomairiro	1909	28 January 1865	Rev. Alexander B. Todd
97	28 January 1865	Thomas Mills Mary McLaren	Thomas Mills Mary McLaren 💍 1865/9352	Bachelor Spinster	Ploughman Servant	26 23	Tokomairiro Tokomairiro	4 years 1 Month	In the House of Mr Robert Mills Tokomairiro	1807	28 January 1865	Rev. Alexander B. Todd
98	31 January 1865	Mark Charles Gatchell Amelia Ann Hutton	Mark Charles Gatchell Amelia Ann Hutton 💍 1865/8777	Bachelor Widow	farmer	30 22	Tokomairiro Caversham Dunedin	1 1/2 year 15 years	In the Manse of Rev Thomas Burns D.D. Dunedin	1605	31 January 1865	Rev. Thomas Burns D.D
99	7 February 1865	John Binnie Anne Hanley	John Binnie Ann Harvey 💍 1865/9394	Bachelor Spinster	Confectioner Dressmaker	29 26	Tokomairiro Tokomairiro	3 Days 7 Weeks	The English Parsonage Tokomairiro	1822	7 February 1865	Rev. R. L. Hanford
100	7 February 1865	Edward Thomas Dillon Isabella Jackson Miller	Edward Thomas Gillon Isabella Jackson Miller 💍 1865/9397	Bachelor Spinster	Journalist	23 22	Tokomairiro Tokomairiro	3 years 1 year	Christ-Church Tokomairiro	1823	7 February 1865	Rev. R. L. Hanford

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).