Intentions to Marry, 1875

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840387, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, May 16 2025.

This register is quite fragile and some of the pages are damaged or even missing.

Page 940

District of Invercargill Quarter ending 31 March 1875

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
8	12 January 1875	John Ford Margaret Collind	John Forde Margaret Hollins 💍 1875/266 John Doreen Margaret Knowles 💍 1875/855 John Moore Margaret Kennelly 💍 1876/506	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor Domestic Servant	30 27	Invercargill Invercargill	6 years 6 years	At the Roman Catholic Church, Invercargill	75/291	12 January 1875	Rev. Father Burke
9	13 January 1875	James Green Mary Ayre Bowley	James Green Mary Ann Dowley 💍 1875/56 Samuel Green Mary Jane Parkes 💍 1875/191	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer Domestic Servant	28 21	Invercargill Invercargill	12 months 6 months	At the house of the Rev. J. D. Taylor, Invercargill	75/58	13 January 1875	Rev. Mr. Williams
10	21 January 1875	Louis Houston Mary Globern		Bachelor Spinster	Labour Servant	30 31	Benmore Benmore	11 years 3 years	At the house of R. C. Adam, Little	75/59	21 January 1875	Rev. Mr. Williams
11	23 January 1875	Richard Blackham Elizabeth Webb	Richard Blackham Elizabeth Webb 💍 1875/565	Bachelor Spinster	Hotel-Keeper	30 23	Invercargill Invercargill	12 months 3 months	At the Church of England, Invercargill	75/569	23 January 1875	W. S. P. Tanner
12	25 January 1875	John Sloper Isabella Gilchrist	John Sloan Isobella Gilchrist 💍 1875/256	Bachelor Spinster	Boot maker	38 28	Invercargill Invercargill	12 years 7 years	At the house of J. Kind, Robertson (See Riverton)	75/288	25 January 1875	Rev. Mr. Ross
13	26 January 1875	William Glapie Isabella Grey	William Blakie Isabella Gray 💍 1875/3149 William Innep Isabella Gardiner 💍 1875/1729 William McDonald Isabella Fraser 💍 1875/361 William Sanson Isabella Nairn 💍 1875/793	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	29 21	Ryal Bush Winton	12 years 10 years	At the house of James Gray, Winton	75/432	26 January 1875	Rev. Mr. Stevens
14	2 February 1875	John Whiteford Margaret Combe	John Whiteford Margaret McCombe 💍 1875/434	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Dressmaker	36 30	Invercargill Invercargill	11 years 3 months	At the Office of the Registrar, Invercargill	75/44	2 February 1875	The Registrar

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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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).