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 766

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
376	18 December 1874	James Alexander Thomson Mary Ann Kirkpatrick	James Alexander Thomson Mary Ann Kirkpatrick 💍 1874/13000	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	20 19	Dunedin Dunedin	16 years 14 years	Knox Church Dunedin	2288	George Thomson, father	21 December 1874	Rod. D. Stuart
377	21 December 1874	Francis Chase Jane Johnston	Francis Chase Janet Johnston 💍 1874/12991	Widower Spinster	Farmer	36 28	Dunedin Dunedin	2 years 2 years	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	2435	Catherine Johnson, mother	21 December 1874	Wm Barker Street
378	21 December 1874	Henry Hepburn Shand Mary Watt	Henry Kizlin Saunders Mary Watt 💍 1874/13741	Bachelor Spinster	Cabinet Maker	29 26	Dunedin Dunedin	6 years 7 years	In the house of John Munroe Frederick Street Dunedin	2692		21 December 1874	Revd Lindsay Mackintosh
379	21 December 1874	Henry Charles Fisher Harriet Paris	Henry Charles Foster Harriet Paris 💍 1874/13006	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	29 20	Dunedin Caversham	2.5 years 15 months	In the house of Henry Charles Fisher	2440	William Paris, father	21 December 1874	Rod D Stuart
380	21 December 1874	Robert Barnes Adelaide Esther Marie	Robert Barnes Adelaide Esther Marie 💍 1874/13003	Bachelor Spinster	Asphalter	36 22	Dunedin Dunedin	13 years 12 months	In the house of Thomas Carnahan Kew Dunedin	2439		21 December 1874	Rod D Stuart
381	21 December 1874	Nahum Jacobs Kate Levi	Nathan I Isaacs Kate Levi 💍 1874/13081	Bachelor Spinster	Share Broker	27 21	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 8 years	In the house of Mr David Levi George St Dunedin	2466		21 December 1874	Revd Isaac Zachariah
382	22 December 1874	Robert Kidd Isabella Yorkes	Robt Kidd Isabella Forbes 💍 1874/13021	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	38 26	Dunedin Dunedin	4 days 6 weeks	In the house of George Yorbes Kaikorai Valley	2445		22 December 1874	Revd Alex Grant
383	23 December 1874	John Coghlan Sarah Ann Smith	John Coghlan Sara Ann Smith 💍 1874/12997 John Sharkey Mary Ann Smith 💍 1874/10759	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	23 19	Dunedin Dunedin	3 years 4 years	In the house of the Revd Geo Stuart George St Dunedin	2437	Mary Ann Smith, mother	23 December 1874	Rod D. 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).