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 357

District of Wellington Quarter ending Jan - Mar

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
17	21 January 1880	Jas Lewis Hall Jessie Adams	James Lewis Hall Jessie Adams 💍 1880/3162	Widower Spinster	Traveller	33 24	Wellington	5 days 4 days	Registrar's Office	80/170		21 January 1880	Registrar
18	21 January 1880	Christopher [UNCLEAR] Hannah [UNCLEAR] Ipmo		Bach Spin	Freeman	31 30		14 mos 2 mos	Registrar's Office	80/141		21 January 1880	Registrar
19	21 January 1880	Hugh Marriner Alice Lydia Nightingale	Hugh Marriner Alice Lydia Nightingale 💍 1880/626	Bach Spin	Surgeon	31 31	Palmerston Wellington	8 mos 3 days	St Peter's Church	80/209		21 January 1880	Arch [UNCLEAR]
20	23 January 1880	Jno Fred Young Mary Ann Mudgway	John Frederick Young Mary Ann Mudgway 💍 1880/3165	Bach Spin	Labourer	24 23	Lower Hutt Petone	4 yrs 4 yrs	Registrar's Office	80/173		23 January 1880	Registrar
21	23 January 1880	David Jas Duff Eliza E Mather	David James Duff Elizabeth Eleanor Nation 💍 1880/3170	Bach Spin	Draper	20 23	Wellington	18 mos 4 yrs	Registrar's Office	80/144	[UNCLEAR] Brother	29 January 1880	Registrar
22	23 January 1880	Joseph Hallett Edith E Neeksby	Joseph Hallett Edith Elizabeth Whebby 💍 1880/3164	Bach Spin	Sheep Farmer	29 26	do do	5 days 4 yrs	Registrar's Office	80/142		23 January 1880	Registrar
23	24 January 1880	Henry A Simpkins Sarah E Randell		Bach Spin	Bookseller	25 21	do do	3 days 4 yrs	St Paul's	80/218		24 January 1880	Rev B H Harvey
24	26 January 1880	George Towersley Elizabeth Lane	George Towersey Elizabeth Lane 💍 1880/1670	Bach Spin	Baker	24 29	do	4 yrs 2 whs	House of Mrs Manley	80/168		26 January 1880	Rev J Paterson

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).