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 562

District of Christchurch 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
3630	12 April 1875	William Purdom Selina Amelia Taylor	William Purdom Selina Amelia Taylor 💍 1875/1464	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Servant	21 21	Christchurch Christchurch	12 years 4 years Tuam Street	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1389		12 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3631	12 April 1875	William Willis Lucy Beck	William Willis Lucy Beck 💍 1875/1148	Bachelor Spinster	Sergeant of Police	33 22	Christchurch Christchurch	3 days 5 days	In the Wesleyan Leithfield Church	75/1003		12 April 1875	Rev. J. Bullen
3632	12 April 1875	Andrew Sallally Jane Saville	Andrew Gallety Jane Savill 💍 1875/1453	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Farmer	29 25	Templeton Halkett	11 years Tuam Street 11 years	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1401		12 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3633	12 April 1875	Edward Savill Elizabeth Stare	Edward Savill Elesebeth Harris 💍 1875/1452	Bachelor Spinster		22	St Albans St Albans	5 years Christchurch 2 weeks	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1388		12 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3634	12 April 1875	John Meiklejohn Honor Jones		Bachelor Widow	Engineer	30 30	Courtenay Courtenay	12 years Christchurch 3 days	In the Wesleyan Chapel	75/1390		12 April 1875	Rev. J. Bullen
3636	14 April 1875	Samuel Halligan Mary McLaughlan	Samuel Hallagun Mary McLaughlin 💍 1875/1447	Bachelor Spinster	Platelayer Servant	22 21	Racecourse Christchurch	11 months Tuam Street 11 months In the house	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1396		15 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3637	16 April 1875	Prosper Meslager Augusta Silke		Bachelor Spinster	Cook Servant	40 23	Christchurch Christchurch	2 years In the German Church 3 months In the house	In the German Church	75/1395		16 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3638	16 April 1875	Alexander Heinman Jane Vance	Alexander Heinman Jane Vencel 💍 1875/1443	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Servant	30 19	Puddleton Cashmere	3 months In the house of R. C. Fraser 6 weeks Tuam Street	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1392	Having authority from parents	16 April 1875	R. C. Fraser
3639	14 April 1875	John Brown Isabella McKeuzie	John Brown Isabella Barter 💍 1875/2412	Bachelor Spinster	Cook	21 20	Cashmere Cashmere	9 months Tuam Street 3 years Kelvin Street	In the house of R. C. Fraser	75/1393	William McKeuzie, Father	14 April 1875	R. C. Fraser

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).