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 517

District of Invercargill 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
276	11 July 1865	William Gunn Jane Jamison	William Gunn Jane Sanderson 💍 1865/9526	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	26 22	Riverton Invercargill	2 years 2 years	In the house of Mr Harvey at Invercargill	1877		11 July 1865	A. H. Stobo
277	11 July 1865	John Walker Dorothy McGrath	John Walker Dorothy McGrath 💍 1865/9481	Bachelor Spinster	Mariner Housekeeper	27 26	Invercargill Invercargill	5 years 3 years	In the house of Samuel Farrar Esqr. at Invercargill	1858		11 July 1865	J. T. Shaw
278	22 July 1865	James Brass Isabella Gray	James Brass Isabella Gray 💍 1865/9529	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	21 24	Forest Hill Makarewa	10 months 12 months	In the house of James Brass at Makarewa	1878		22 July 1865	A. H. Stobo
279	25 July 1865	John Gellatly Eliza Anderson	John Geltatly Eliza Anderson 💍 1865/9532	Bachelor Spinster	Saddler	29 22	Invercargill Invercargill	2 years 5 days	In the house of John Brown at Invercargill	1879		25 July 1865	A. H. Stobo
280	7 August 1865	Peter Barabe Bridget Cannon	Peter Carable Bridget Cannon 💍 1865/16	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd Servant	29 23	Invercargill Invercargill	3 days 3 days	In the Roman Catholic Church at Invercargill	1838		7 August 1865	P. A. Martin
281	9 August 1865	Edwin Carter Sarah Simmonds	Edwin Carter Sarah Simmonds 💍 1865/9472	Bachelor Spinster	Builder	23 21	Invercargill Invercargill	2 years 18 months	In the house of J. W. Trott at Invercargill	1855		9 August 1865	B. Drake
282	17 August 1865	Kenneth Rose Maria Elizabeth Downing	Kenneth Rose Maria Elizabeth Dowling 💍 1865/9484	Bachelor Spinster	Stationer	24 21	Invercargill Invercargill	5 years 18 months	In the house of George Crosbie at Invercargill	1859		17 August 1865	J. T. Shaw
283	21 August 1865	I. Alexander McIntyre Susan [UNCLEAR]		Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	22 17	Oteramika Long Bush	2 years 12 months	In the house of D. McIntyre at Long Bush	1865	Duncan [UNCLEAR], father	21 August 1865	J. Alexander
284	21 August 1865	John Field Devie Emily Baring Young	John Feild Deck Emily Baring Young 💍 1865/9604	Bachelor Spinster	Surgeon	30 23	Invercargill Riverton	18 months 2 years	In the house of Henry Young at Long Bush near Riverton	1904		21 August 1865	J. C[UNCLEAR]

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).