Intentions to Marry, 1867

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840379, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 533

District of Dunedin 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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
113	April 20 1867	Alexander McMillan Catherine Peebles	Alexander McMillan Catherine Peebles 💍 1867/8944	Bachelor Widow	Watchman	32 30	Dunedin Dunedin	5 yrs 5 months	In the manse of the Rev. Thomas Burns	1590	April 20	Revd Thomas Burns D.D.
114	April 23 1867	John Stalker Eliza Muir	John Stalker Eliza Muir 💍 1867/9355	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	35 35	Dunedin Dunedin	4 days 2 yrs	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages	1710	April 23rd	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin
115	April 24 1867	John Young Isabella Renneck	John Young Isabella Renneck 💍 1867/9145	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	35 23	Dunedin Dunedin	4 yrs 2 yrs	In St. Pauls Church	1639	April 24th	Revd E. G. Edwards
116	April 25 1867	Thomas Carr Mary Kelley	Thomas Garr Mary Nelly 💍 1867/9250 Thomas Kay Mary Coombes 💍 1867/9091	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	32 25	Peninsula Wakari	21 yrs 1 week	In St Josephs Church	1674	April 25th	Revd E Moreau
117	April 25 1867	Nicholas Berrill Margaret Gertrude Hayward	Nicholas Berrill Margaret Gertrude Haywood 💍 1867/9358	Bachelor Widow	Merchant	34 26	Dunedin Dunedin	4 yrs 3 1/2 yrs	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages	1711	April 25th	Registrar of Marriages Dunedin
118	April 26 1867	Alexander Byars May Wood	Alexander Byars May Wood 💍 1867/9070	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	34 29	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 4 days	In the Baptist Church	1672	April 26th	Revd J S Parsons
119	April 26 1867	John Eccles Maria Wilson	John Eccles Maria Wilson 💍 1867/8950	Bachelor Spinster	Shoemaker	35 21	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	In the Manse of the Rev Thomas Burns	1592	April 26	Revd Thomas Burns D.D.
120	April 26 1867	James Ritchie Rutherford Janet Farrance Brust	James Ritchie Rutherford Janet Torrance Drew 💍 1867/9541	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	35 25	Peninsula Dunedin	2 yrs 4 yrs	In the house of John Drew	1774	April 26	Revd A M Stuart
121	April 27 1867	Adolphus Alexander Clara Louisa Millie Fawcett		Widower Spinster	Fellmonger	38 24	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 6 months	In the house of George Farrett	1772	April 27	Revd A M Stuart

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).