Intentions to Marry, 1874

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840386, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 726

District of Dunedin Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
80	6 March 1874	John Phillips Ann Benfell	John Phillips Ann Benfell 💍 1874/7315	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	24 23	Macandrew Bay Peninsula Do	1 year 1 month	In the house of Andrew Anderson Macandrew Bay	74/269		6 March 1874	Rev. A. Craig
81	6 March 1874	Donald Matheson Jane Hunter	Donald Matheson Jane Hunter 💍 1874/14157	Bachelor Spinster	Grocer	24 23	Kaikorai Valley Halfway Bush	2 years 6 months	In the house of R. S. Sparrow Cargill Street Dunedin	74/448		6 March 1874	Rev. Dr. Stuart
82	9 March 1874	Robert Lees Christina Young	Robert Lees Christina Young 💍 1874/13252	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	28 23	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 4 months	In the house of the Rev. John Gow High Street Dunedin	2524		9 March 1874	Rev. John Gow
83	9 March 1874	John Sewell Sarah Cook	John Sewell Sarah Cook 💍 1874/13255	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	41 41	Dunedin Dunedin	7 months 7 months	In the house of the Rev. John Gow High Street Dunedin	2525		9 March 1874	Rev. John Gow
84	9 March 1874	James Marshall Eliza Abelth Selford	James Marshall Elizabeth Telford 💍 1874/7204 James Marshall Elizabeth Mewburn 💍 1874/10258	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith Dom. Servant	33 41	Dunedin Dunedin	5 months 8 days	In the house of the Rev. Dr. Stuart George Street Dunedin	74/450		9 March 1874	Rev. Dr. Stuart
85	9 March 1874	Richard Beatty Mary Ann Small	Richard Beatty Mary Ann Smart 💍 1874/11803	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	29 28	Dunedin Dunedin	4 years 1 year	In St. Paul's Church Dunedin	2025		9 March 1874	Rev. Arch. Edwards
86	10 March 1874	James Dallas Ellen Murdock	James Dallas Ellen Murdock 💍 1874/7588	Bachelor Widow	Miner	32 30	Dunedin Dunedin	14 days 8 years	In the Office of the Deputy Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	74/582		10 March 1874	Deputy Registrar of Marriages
87	11 March 1874	Robert Ross Ann Draper	Robert Kellas Ann Draper 💍 1874/7198	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	30 18	Koper's Inlet, Otago Peninsula Do	8 years 8 years	Knox Church Dunedin	74/449	John Draper, father	11 March 1874	Rev. Dr. 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).