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 745

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
139	13 April 1875	Albert James Howland Grace Grams	Albert James Holland Grace Grains 💍 1875/1381	Bachelor Spinster	Machinist Tailoress	24 years 22 years	Dunedin Dunedin	4 years 2 years	In the house of Mr Allwood, McLaggan Street	75/1453		13 April 1875	Revd R. L. Stuart
140	14 April 1875	Robert Wilkinson Deborah Wright	Robert Wilkinson Deborah Wright 💍 1875/1539	Bachelor Spinster	Farm Labourer Servant	39 years 20 years	Dunedin Dunedin	4 years 3 months	In St Paul's Church, Dunedin	75/1489	Not required	14 April 1875	Revd E. G. Edwards
141	14 April 1875	Alfred Jardine Sarah Jane Albury	Alfred Jardine Sarah Jane Albury 💍 1875/1380	Bachelor Spinster	Warehouseman	34 years 21 years	Caversham Caversham	2 months 3 months	In the house of the Revd O. Stuart, Dunedin	75/1452		14 April 1875	Revd O. Stuart
142	15 April 1875	Andrew Armit Catherine Anderson	Andrew Armit Catherine Anderson 💍 1875/1408	Widower Spinster	Labourer	60 years 50 years	Dunedin Dunedin	4 days 3 months	In the house of David Smith, Cargill Street, Dunedin	75/1457 / 1533		15 April 1875	Revd R. L. Stuart
143	17 April 1875	Robert Stirling Mary Green	Robert Wright Stirling Mary Green 💍 1875/1532	Bachelor Spinster	Medical Practitioner	26 years 37 years	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 7 days	In St Matthew's Church, Dunedin	75/1565		17 April 1875	Revd G. Penny
144	17 April 1875	Thomas Thomas Mary Ann Sprague	Thomas Thomas Mary Ann Sprague 💍 1875/1526	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	34 years 29 years	Dunedin Dunedin	5 months 7 months	In the Wesleyan Church, Dunedin	75/1482		17 April 1875	Revd C. W. Rigg
145	21 April 1875	Henry Pennerbeck Mary Anna Williams	Henry Wenerberk Mary Anna Williams 💍 1875/1534	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	40 years 34 years	Peninsula Dunedin	11 years 9 months	In the Wesleyan Church, Stuart Street, Dunedin	75/1484		21 April 1875	Revd C. W. Rigg
146	22 April 1875	William Sloan Elizabeth McLee	William Sloan Elizabeth McGee 💍 1875/1494	Bachelor Spinster	Ploughman Cook	27 years 22 years	Green Island Dunedin	2 years 6 months	In St Andrew's Church, Dunedin	75/1568		22 April 1875	Revd John Lea

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).