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 751

District of Dunedin 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
272	18 August 1874	John Barry Emma Lockwood	John Barry Emma Lockwood 💍 1874/13996	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	26 19	Dunedin Dunedin	6 months 19 years	In St Joseph Church Dowling Street Dunedin	2784	R. Lockwood, father	31 August 1874	Bishop Moran
273	1 September 1874	John Bellett Mary Ann Badier	John Bellett Mary Ann Badier 💍 1874/5740	Bachelor Widow	Sailor Tailoress	25 36	Dunedin Dunedin	10 months 10 months	In the house of Mr Badier St Andrew Street	1490		1 September 1874	Rev Dr Stuart
274	2 September 1874	John Stewart Ellen Bryden Beattie	John Stewart Helen Brydon Beattie 💍 1874/9409	Widower Widow	Coachbuilder	40 38	Dunedin Dunedin	11 years 11 years	In the house of Ellen Bryden Beattie Canongate Dunedin	1206		2 September 1874	Rev J. Maughn
275	3 September 1874	James Marshall Elizabeth Melburn	James Marshall Elizabeth Mewburn 💍 1874/10258 James Marshall Elizabeth Telford 💍 1874/7204	Bachelor Spinster	Express Driver	23 17	Dunedin Dunedin	13 years 13 years	In Knox Church Dunedin	1493	Consent of William Melburn, father	3 September 1874	Rev Dr Stuart
276	3 September 1874	Richard Francis Willis Ann Gracey	Richard Francis Willis Anne Tracey 💍 1874/13999	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk Dressmaker	27 25	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	Dunedin St Joseph's Church Dowling Street	2785		3 September 1874	Bishop Moran
277	3 September 1874	David Shepherd Elizabeth White	David Shepherd Elizabeth White 💍 1874/13324	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher	27 25	Dunedin Dunedin	7 years 10 years	In the house of Mr George White Duke Street Dunedin	2548		3 September 1874	Rev. Ino Gow
278	5 September 1874	Thomas George Saunders Louisa Tumphrys	Thomas George Saunders Louisa Humphreys 💍 1874/9532	Bachelor Spinster	Master Mariner	30 21	Dunedin Dunedin	12 years 18 months	In St Paul's Church Dunedin	1247		5 September 1874	Rev E. G. Edwards
279	4 September 1874	James William Cotton Elizabeth Melsham	James William Cotton Elizabeth Walsham 💍 1874/13144	Bachelor Spinster	Horse dealer	20 18	Dunedin Dunedin	2 years 11 years	In All Saints Church Cumberland Street Dunedin	2488	Consent of father, James Wm Cotton. Consent of father, [UNCLEAR]	Septr 4/78	Rev R. L. Stanford

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).