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 746

District of Dunedin Quarter ending 30 June 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	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
147	23 April 1875	Robert Wade Mary Kems	Robert Wade Mary Kernes 💍 1875/1536	Widower Widow	Bricklayer	42 years 37 years	Dunedin Dunedin	14 years 12 years	In the house of Mrs Jessie Lockwood, Dundas St, Dunedin	75/1486		23 April 1875	Revd James Copeland, O.M.
148	26 April 1875	James Coventry Ann Heldieth	James Coventry Ann Hildreth 💍 1875/1533	Bachelor Spinster	Tinsmith	29 years 19 years	Dunedin Dunedin	15 years 2 years	In the Baptist Church	75/1488	Wm Heldieth, father	26 April 1875	Revd Geo Rigg
149	27 April 1875	William Forsyth Mary Anderson	William Forsyth Mary Anderson 💍 1875/1430 William Henry Close Mary Anderson 💍 1876/362	Bachelor Spinster	Brickmaker Domestic Servant	40 years 30 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 years 4 years	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	75/1528		27 April 1875	Wm Parker Street, Registrar
150	27 April 1875	Richard John Hawke Elizabeth Adshead	Richard John Hawkes Elizabeth Adshead 💍 1875/1431	Widower Widow	Cook	39 years 35 years	Dunedin Dunedin	13 years 4 days	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages, Dunedin	75/1529		27 April 1875	Wm Parker Street, Registrar
151	27 April 1875	Joseph Booth Sophia Hardinge	Joseph Booth Helen Sophia Wardroper 💍 1875/1437	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	34 years 26 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 5 months	In All Saints Church	75/1512		27 April 1875	Revd R. L. Stanford, O.M.
152	28 April 1875	Robert Kirkwood Julia Ann Hoone	Robert Kirkwood Julia Ann Noone 💍 1875/1754	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Dressmaker	30 years 26 years	Caversham Caversham	4 months 6 years	In the house of the Revd Lindsay Mackay, Dunedin	75/1594		28 April 1875	Revd Lindsay Mackay, O.M.
153	28 April 1875	William Smart Jane Wood	William Smart Jane Wood 💍 1875/1495	Bachelor Spinster	Carrier General Servant	40 years 33 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 weeks 2 weeks	In the house of the Revd John Gow, Dunedin	75/1569		28 April 1875	Revd John Gow, O.M.
154	29 April 1875	Robert Truman Preston Martha Reeve	Robert William Preston Martha Reeve 💍 1875/1382	Bachelor Spinster	Baker	24 years 29 years	Port Chalmers Dunedin	15 months 6 weeks	In the house of Mr Watkins, Royal Terrace, Port Chalmers	75/1457		29 April 1875	Revd R. L. Stanford, O.M.

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).