Intentions to Marry, 1866

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840378, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 501

District of East Taieri 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
93	21st April 1866	Thomas Hetherington Margaret Watson	Thomas Hetherington Margaret Watson 💍 1866/9436	Widower Spinster	Coal-miner Domestic Servant	35 30	Saddle Hill Saddle Hill	1/2 years 3 months	In the house of Thomas Hetherington Saddle Hill	1745		21st April 1866	Rev Michael Watt
94	21st April 1866	Alexander Shand Janet Graham Todd	Alexander Shand Janet Graham Todd 💍 1866/9604	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer -	31 24	East Taieri East Taieri	5 years 14 years	In the house of Alexander Todd Islington	1805		21st April 1866	Rev William Will
95	28th April 1866	Peter Campbell Hannah Palmer	Peter Campbell Hannah Palmer 💍 1866/9817	Bachelor Spinster	Sawyer -	25 19	Waikola Taieri Village	6 years 19 years	In the house of William Palmer Taieri Village	1881	William Palmer Father	28th April 1866	Rev John M. Allan
96	12th May 1866	John Chalker Amelia Culling formerly Lacher	John Chalker Amelia Culling 💍 1866/9634	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	30 27	North Taieri North Taieri	2 years 3 years	In the house of John Chalker Black Horse Hotel North Taieri	1815		12th May 1866	Rev. M. Davidson
97	14th May 1866	John Taylor Margaret Raffan	John Taylor Margaret Raffan 💍 1866/9607	Bachelor Spinster	Farm Servant	28 22	East Taieri East Taieri	1 year 6 months	In the house of John Kirkland Elm Grove	1806		14th May 1866	Rev. William Will
98	6th June 1866	Samuel Turner Eliza Duncan	Samuel Turner Eliza Duncan 💍 1866/9442	Widower Spinster	Farmer	52 45	Taieri Beach Spring Gardens	4 years 1 week	In the house of Alexander Smith Spring Gardens	1747		6th June 1866	Rev. Michael Watt
99	8th June 1866	James Bourie Margaret White	James Bowie Margaret Whyte 💍 1866/9610 James Hardman Margaret Smith 💍 1866/9952 James Kerby Margaret Hartnett 💍 1866/8641 James Knight Margaret Reid 💍 1866/4510 James Forrest Margaret Sullivan 💍 1866/4774	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	29 26	East Taieri Dunedin	2 years 1 year	In the house of Robert Blair Blair Cottage Dunedin	1807		8th June 1866	Rev William Will
100	12th June 1866	John Blair Jane Neilson	John Blair Janet Neilson 💍 1866/9613	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer -	22 22	East Taieri East Taieri	8 years 4 days	In the house of Robert Blair Blair Cottage	1808		12th June 1866	Rev William Will

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

100% Contrast

100% Brightness

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).