Intentions to Marry, 1889

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840392, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Page 033

District of Wangarei Quarter ending 31 December 1880 Registrar James Thomson Reyburn

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
110	10 November 1880	John Henry Ewen Rose Emma Worsnop	John Henry Ewen Rose Emma Worsnop 💍 1880/2675	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter	39 30	Wangarei Wangarei	2 mos 10 years	Registrar Office, Wangarei	80/2226		10 November 1880	James Thomson Reyburn, Registrar
111	10 November 1880	John Mulcahy Selina Cook	John Mulcahy Selina Cook 💍 1880/2523	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	20 18	Wangarei Wangarei	8 mos 16 years	Residence of James Ward, Wangarei	80/2221	None in Colony; Ellen Cooker Ward, mother	15 November 1880	Lyttelton Lucas Cubitt, Church of England
112	12 November 1880	Elias Le Boutillier Elizabeth Charlotte Maltby	Elias Le Brutillier Elizabeth Charlotte Malty 💍 1880/2524	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	28 Full	Wangarei Wangarei	2 years 10 years	Residence of Charles Le Boutillier, Tametarau, Wangarei	80/2222		12 November 1880	Lyttelton Lucas Cubitt, Church of England
113	22 November 1880	Edward Crocker Jenkins Jessie Agnes Going	Edward Crocker Jenkins Jessie Agnes Goring 💍 1880/2525	Bachelor Spinster	Baker	21 24	Wangarei Wangarei	12 years 14 years	Residence of John Going, Ruatangata, Wangarei	80/2223		22 November 1880	Lyttelton Lucas Cubitt, Church of England
114	30 November 1880	Charles Storey Eleanor Speer Wilson	Charles Storey Eleanor Speer Wilson 💍 1880/2668	Bachelor Spinster	Postmaster	26 20	Wangarei Wangarei	7 mos 10 years	Residence of Jas Brown Wilson, Wangarei	80/2225	Jas Brown Wilson, Father	30 November 1880	Alexander Mackintosh, Presbyterian
115	20 December 1880	John Thomas Nelson Margaret Wallace Rowe	John Thomas Nelson Margaret Wallace Rowe 💍 1880/2657	Widower Spinster	Labourer	36 16	Wangarei Wangarei	2 years 4 mos	Residence of Alfred Charles Courtney, Wangarei	80/2224	Mary Ann Rowe or Spence, mother	20 December 1880	Lyttelton Lucas Cubitt, Church of England
116	24 December 1880	Joseph Edge Eliza Jane Morgan	Joseph Edge Eliza Jane Morgan 💍 1880/2676	Bachelor Spinster	Settler	23 18	Maungatapere, Wangarei Maungatapere, Wangarei	21 years	Residence of William Morgan, Maungatapere	80/2227	William Morgan, father	24 December 1880	Christopher Abernethy, Wesleyan

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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Attribution: This image was digitised by Archives NZ Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga and is republished here under CC BY. It has been cropped and rotated for convenience.

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).