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 805

District of East Taieri 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	Consent	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
1	4 February 1875	John Drinnen Janet McDougal	John Drennan Janet McDonald Machan 💍 1875/158	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	25 21	Mosgiel Dunedin	11 years 3 days	House of Thomas Drinnen, Dunedin	75/1214		4 February 1875	Rev Dr Stuart
2	4 March 1875	John Lainchbury Emma Lainchbury	John Lainchbury Emma Lainchbury 💍 1875/527	Bachelor Spinster	Farm Servant General Servant	23 22	East Taieri East Taieri	1 year 3 days	House of John Sutherland, East Taieri	75/1649		4 March 1875	Rev John Sutherland
3	20 March 1875	Peter Meldrum Margaret Campbell Dickson	Peter Meldrum Margaret Campbell Dickson 💍 1875/254	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	31 24	East Taieri East Taieri	8 years 16 years	House of Andrew Dickson, East Taieri	75/1286		20 March 1875	Rev William Will
65	12 January 1875	John Baxter Jane Richards	John Baxter Jane Richards 💍 1875/369	Widower Widow	Settler Seamstress	50 34	Brighton Brighton	1 year 3 days	Office of Registrar, East Taieri	75/1110		12 January 1875	James Waddell
66	20 January 1875	Henry Henderson Jane Dickson	Henry Henderson Jane Dickson 💍 1875/18	Bachelor Spinster	Teacher	25 24	Brighton Kuri Bush	9 months 14 years	House of Alexander Dickson, Kuri Bush	75/1229		20 January 1875	Rev Michael Watt
67	26 January 1875	Joseph Pedowski Maria Walinski	Joseph Pedouski Maria Walinski 💍 1876/3224	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	28 16	Greytown Greytown	2 years 5 months	Roman Catholic Church, East Taieri	75/1233	John Switalla, Step Father	26 January 1875	Rev Father Colman
68	28 January 1875	Walter Blackie Grace Steel	Walter Blackie Grace Steele 💍 1875/275	Bachelor Spinster	Carrier	21 22	East Taieri West Taieri	21 years 3 days	House of John Blackie, West Taieri	75/1283		28 January 1875	Rev William Will
69	28 January 1875	William Kirkland Janet Gora	William Kirkland Janet Gow 💍 1875/253	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	27 22	Elm Grove Invermay	25 years 20 years	House of William Gora, Invermay	75/1285		28 January 1875	Rev William Will
70	1 February 1875	Walter Little Mary Smail	Walter Little Mary Smail 💍 1875/276	Bachelor Spinster	Gold Miner	30 21	East Taieri East Taieri	3 days 6 months	House of James Miller, Silverside	75/1284		1 February 1875	Rev William Will

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).