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 489

District of Tuapeka Quarter ending Jul - Sep

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
43	8 July 1865	James Leeper Isabella Jackson	James Ledgerwood Isabella Jackson 💍 1865/9115	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Cook	26 20	Tuapeka Tuapeka	12 mos. 9 mos.	Presbyterian Church, Lawrence	1726		18 July 1865	Rev. James Copland
44	8 July 1865	Samuel Strong Annie Mathewson	Samuel Strong Annie MacDonald 💍 1865/9118	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	28 18	Tuapeka Tuapeka	2 1/2 years 9 mos.	Mr Kyle's Residence Tuapeka	1727		18 July 1865	Rev. James Copland
45	10 July 1865	William Greenwood Lucretia Watson		Bachelor Spinster	Miner Servant	33 21	Tuapeka Tuapeka	18 mos 9 days	Gaelic Church Wetherstones	1729		19 July 1865	Rev. James Copland
46	17 July 1865	William Ramsay Mary Leceay	William Cooney Mary Ridgway 💍 1865/10	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel Keeper House Keeper	29 25	Tuapeka Tuapeka	3 1/2 years 2 1/2 years	Mr Donald's Residence Lawrence	1728		22 July 1865	Rev. James Copland
47	12 July 1865	John McColl Jane Evans	John McColl Jane Evans 💍 1865/9127	Bachelor Spinster	Store Keeper	28 24	Tuapeka Tuapeka	3 1/2 years 2 1/2 years	At the Residence of Mr John McColl, Lawrence	1730		12 July 1865	Revd James Copland
48	18 July 1865	John Branting Susannah Skiers		Bachelor Spinster	Miner	24 25	Tuapeka Tuapeka	4 years 15 mos	Office of Registrar, Wetherston	1762		24 July 1865	Rev. James Copland
49	27 July 1865	Alfred Marr Lavinia Rubina Marks		Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Bar maid	24 18	Tuapeka Tuapeka	10 mos 1 mo	Office of Registrar, Tuapeka	1763		29 July 1865	E. G. Free, Registrar of Marriages
50	29 July 1865	Lawrence Holmes Emma Fyfe	Lawrence Carter Holmes Emma Vye 💍 1865/9130	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	34 16	Tuapeka Tuapeka	4 years 2 years	At the Residence of Mr. H. Fyfe Lawrence	1731	Henry Fyfe of Lawrence, Father	2 August 1865	Rev. James Copland
51	22 August 1865	James Smith Lucy Ryfe	James Smith Lucy Doyle 💍 1865/9190	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher House Maid	34 30	Wetherstones Wetherstones	10 mos 12 mos	Roman Catholic Chapel, Lawrence	1737		22 August 1865	Rev. Palmer Dubig

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).