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 739

District of Dunedin Quarter ending 31 March 1865

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
105	20 March 1875	Michael Thomas Gonnan Sarah White	Michael Thomas Gorman Sarah White 💍 1875/450	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	21 years 19 years	Dunedin Dunedin	1 year 12 years	In the house of Michael Thomas Gonnan	75/469	William White, father	20 March 1875	Revd. D. Stuart
106	20 March 1875	Thomas Robertson Mary McBeath	Thomas Robertson Mary McBeath 💍 1875/301	Bachelor Spinster	Coach Painter	27 years 20 years	Dunedin Dunedin	11 years 11 years	In the house of Mrs. McBeath	75/336		20 March 1875	Revd. D. Stuart
107	22 March 1875	Thomas Chandler Helen Campbell	Thomas Chandler Helen Campbell 💍 1875/629 John Strathearn Gilmour Helen Campbell 💍 1875/895	Bachelor Spinster	Sailor	24 years 20 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 6 months	In the house of the Revd. Gow	75/405		22 March 1875	Revd. John Gow
108	22 March 1875	Thomas Robertson Elizabeth Eagleton	Thomas Robertson Elizabeth Eggelston Anderson 💍 1875/302 John Robertson Elizabeth Watts 💍 1875/2904 James Robertson Elizabeth Mary Hamilton Long 💍 1875/2550	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer Dressmaker	25 years 20 years	Dunedin Dunedin	12 years 9 months	In the house of Mr. Justina Corbett	75/334		22 March 1875	Revd. D. Stuart
109	22 March 1875	Alexander McLachlan Annie Meauley	Alexander McLachlan Annie McCauley 💍 1875/577	Widower Spinster	Farmer Servant	45 years 35 years	Whare Flat Whare Flat	11 years 3 months	Knox Church, Dunedin	75/659		22 March 1875	Revd. Alex Blake
110	22 March 1875	Benjamin Hoare Elizabeth Thomas	Benjamin Hoare Elizabeth Thomas 💍 1875/147	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Machinist	25 years 20 years	Dunedin Dunedin	5 days 5 days	In the house of Thomas King	75/128		22 March 1875	Revd. C. W. Rigg
111	24 March 1875	William Edmonds Mary Bradley	William Edmonds Mary Bradley 💍 1875/481	Widower Spinster	Plasterer Dressmaker	48 years 29 years	Dunedin Dunedin	10 years 3 years	In the Christian Chapel Great King Street Dunedin	75/524		24 March 1875	Revd. W. N. Rate, Ch of Christ
112	24 March 1875	Rose Gunn Johan Sutherland		Bachelor Spinster	Manager of mines	26 years 24 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 years	In Mr. Savers Lodging house	75/335		24 March 1875	Revd. D. Stuart
113	24 March 1875	George McLeod Christina Campbell	George McLeod Christina Campbell 💍 1875/322 George McLeod Ann Campbell 💍 1876/1118	Bachelor Widow	Carpenter	34 years 39 years	Dunedin Dunedin	5 months 6 months	In the house Knox church	75/334		24 March 1875	Revd. D. Stuart

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).