Intentions to Marry, 1877

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840389, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, April 16 2025

Page 769

District of Dunedin Quarter ending 31 March 1877 Registrar Archibald Reid

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
13 January 1877	Robert Gabites Mary Emma Davys	Robert Gabites Mary Emma Davys 💍 1877/575	Bachelor Spinster	Draper	39 19	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 1 month	In the house of John Winterscale Davys, Stuart Street, Dunedin	77/488	John Hinterscale Davys, father of minor	17 January 1877	Revd Dr Stuart Ord
14 January 1877	William Martin Forster Sarah Maria Ball	William Martin Forster Sarah Maria Ball 💍 1877/623	Bachelor Spinster	Chemist	21 22	Dunedin Dunedin	3 months 3 months	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	77/534		17 January 1877	A.R. Ure Registrar of Marriages
15 January 1877	Emily Hester Buckingham		Spinster		18	Dunedin	3 years	In Knox Church	77/491	no person in the colony to give consent to minor	18 January 1877	Revd Dr Stuart Ord
16 January 1877	Sydney Chowne Lambert Emily Hester Buckingham		Bachelor Spinster	Warehouseman	23 18	Dunedin Dunedin	20 years 3 years	In Knox Church Dunedin	77/491	no person in the colony to give consent to minor	18 January 1877	Revd Dr Stuart
16 January 1877	John Muirhead Margaret Ann Lawson	John Muirhead Margaret Ann Lawson 💍 1877/624	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer Domestic Servant	43 18	Dunedin Dunedin	8 years 7 years	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages	77/538	Charles Lawson father of Minor	20 January 1877	A.R. Ure Registrar of Marriage
17 January 1877	Joseph George Briant Margaret Perrie	Joseph George Briant Margaret Ferrie 💍 1877/569	Widower Spinster	Carpenter Domestic Servant	33 24	Forbury Caversham	5 months 12 months	In the house of William Perrie	77/474		22 January 1877	Revd In. Russell Ord

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 1899. More registers are being added almost every week.

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).