Intentions to Marry, 1880

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 349

District of Palmerston North Quarter ending Oct - Dec

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
42	1 October 1880	William Percy Hall Ramilda Campbell	William Percy Hill Emily Campbell 💍 1880/2794	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer Domestic Servant	25 17	Ashurst Ashurst	2 years 2	Wesleyan Church Palmerston North		No person in Colony to give consent	October 22 1880	Rev. F.C. Dewsbury Wesleyan Minister Palmerston N.
43	20 October 1880	John Hasland Petersen Sarah Jane Wright	Johan Hasland Peterson Sarah Jane Wright 💍 1880/2796	Bachelor Spinster	Cooper	22 18	Longburn Shannon	2 years 15 months	Office of the Registrar Palmerston N.	1247	Mother	October 28 1880	Robert North Keeling Registrar Palmerston N.
44	7 December 1880	George Miller Elizabeth Holmes	George Miller Elizabeth Holmes 💍 1880/2797	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	37 24	Palmerston N. Palmerston N.	21 months 9 months	At the residence of George Beattie Palmerston N.	80/12428		October 9 1880	Rev. A.M. Wright Presbyterian Minister Palmerston North
45	9 December 1880	Henry Alfred Robert Alfred Richard Mace		Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 32	Palmerston N. Feilding	35 years 3 days	Immigration Barracks Feilding	Feilding 80/12443		December 11 1880	Rev. Joshua Jones Anglican Minister Feilding
46	11 December 1880	Frederick Henry Crawford Kate Robertson	Frederick Henry Crawford Kate Robertson 💍 1880/2776	Bachelor Spinster	Brewer	30 20	Palmerston North Wanganui	2 years 3 years	Christ Church Wanganui	Wanganui 80/12442	Mother	December 17 1880	Rev. J.G. Ludow Anglican Minister Wanganui
47	11 December 1880	Henry Morris Maria Rose	Henry Morris Eliza Rose 💍 1880/2795	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	26 19	Palmerston North Palmerston North	5 years 5 months	At the residence of Bridegroom Rangitikei Road	80/12446	Mother	December 18 1880	Rev. F.C. Dewsbury Wesleyan Minister Palmerston N.
48	22 December 1880	Anders Christian Jorgensen Moari Puivena Retha Mari		Bachelor Spinster	Farm Laborer	28 23	Foxton Palmerston North	10 months 4 years	The residence of D. McLean Palmerston N.	Foxton 80/ 12449		December 29 1880	Rev. Christopher Garstad Lutheran Minister Palmerston N.

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 1898. More registers will be added when the Archives NZ Wellington reading room re-opens in September 2025.

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).