Intentions to Marry, 1869

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840381, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 585

District of Dunedin Quarter ending Oct - Dec

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
243	8 November 1869	George Read Elizabeth Wood	George Read Elizabeth Wood 💍 1869/8580	Bachelor Spinster	Express Driver	34 33	Dunedin Dunedin	4 years 3 days	Knose Church, Dunedin	1475		8 November 1869	Rev. D. M. Stuart
244	10 November 1869	Hugh Lockhart Sinnamon Ann Jane Arrady	Hugh Lockhart Sinnamon Ann Jane Brady 💍 1869/9573	Bachelor Spinster	Carrier	29 20	Dunedin Dunedin	6 years 4 months	St Peters Church, Caversham	1820	No person to give consent	10 November 1869	Rev. T. L. Stanley
245	12 November 1869	Charles Ritchie Howden Aline Louise Constance Fraser	Charles Ritchie Howden Aline Louise Constance Fraser 💍 1869/8586	Bachelor Spinster	Distiller	32 22	Dunedin Dunedin	5 years 2 years	House of Captain Fraser, High Street, Dunedin	1477		12 November 1869	Rev. D. M. Stuart
246	12 November 1869	James Beveridge Eliza Fletcher Ouchterlonie	James Beveridge Eliza Fletcher Auchterlonie 💍 1869/8598	Bachelor Spinster	Grocer	31 26	Dunedin Dunedin	5 years 4 years	House of James Johnson, Roslyn	1481		12 November 1869	Rev. D. M. Stuart
247	15 November 1869	John Hill Mary Ann Martin	John Hill Mary Ann Martin 💍 1869/8787	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	29 18	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	Manse of the Rev. Dr Thomas Burns, Dunedin	1549	David Carmichael Martin, Father	15 November 1869	Rev. Thomas Burns
248	16 November 1869	William Paton Grace Stewart	William Paton Grace Stewart 💍 1869/8589 William Eggenton Margaret Stewart 💍 1869/4464 William McCoweat Phebe Stewart 💍 1869/5415	Bachelor Spinster	Watchmaker	26 25	Dunedin Dunedin	6 years 6 years	House of Alexander Wardlaw, North East Valley	1478		16 November 1869	Rev. D. M. Stuart
249	18 November 1869	Montague Mosley Susanna Leocardia Jaine	Montague Mosley Susanna Leocardia Taine 💍 1869/8928	Bachelor Spinster	Civil service	32 26	Dunedin Dunedin	3 weeks 6 years	St. Pauls Church, Dunedin	1596		18 November 1869	Rev. E. G. Edwards

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).