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 381

District of Wellington Quarter ending Jul - Sep

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
201	11 September 1878	James Murphy Margaret Daily	James Murphy Margaret Daly 💍 1880/2966	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	24 24	Wellington do	4 days do	St Marys Cathedral	80/11423		11 September 1878	Rev. Peter Coffey
202	13 September 1878	George Moore Lucy Jane Mason	George Moore Lucy Jane Mason 💍 1880/2898	Bachelor Spinster	Letter	37 23	do Taita	5 years 5 years	St James's Hutt	80/11424		13 September 1878	Rev. Thos Fancourt
203	13 September 1878	William Saywell Isabella Gooding	William Sagwell Isabella Gosling 💍 1880/2894 William Russell Isabella Shand 💍 1880/2160	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	23 23	Hutt Belmont	3 days 3 years	at House of Mr. Gooding Belmont	80/11424		14 September 1878	Rev. Wm Campbell
204	15 September 1878	Alfred Chorley Annie Bird	Alfred Chorley Annie Bird 💍 1880/2970	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher	25 18	Wellington do	4 years 5 years	House of Mrs Bird Thompson St.	80/11426	Thos Bird (Father)	18 September 1878	Rev. John Moir
205	16 September 1878	Matthew John Murphy Louisa Jane Harpley	Matthew John Murphy Louisa Jane Harpley 💍 1880/2892	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	28 24	do do	1 day 6 hrs	Registrar Office	80/11429		16 September 1878	Dep. Registrar Wellington
206	17 September 1878	Frank Edward Blackwood Sewell Alice Eliza Coey Donaldson	Frank Edward Blackwood Sewell Alice Eliza Coly Donaldson 💍 1880/2893	Widower Spinster	Surveyor	26 23	do do	4 hrs 2 years	Registrar Office	80/11430		17 September 1878	Registrar of Wellington
207	20 September 1878	William Hobbs Elizabeth Ayload	William Evans Elizabeth Logan 💍 1880/1549 William Hird Elizabeth Alexander 💍 1880/1154 William Pearse Elizabeth Ashton 💍 1880/1091 William Rogers Elizabeth Kitchen 💍 1880/774 William Owens Elizabeth Davison 💍 1880/1425 William Harvey Elizabeth Munro 💍 1880/946 William Love Elizabeth Jane Yeoman 💍 1880/1135 William Perry Elizabeth Stewart 💍 1881/648 William Bounsall Elizabeth Oliver 💍 1880/2348 William Wiggens Elizabeth Michael 💍 1880/3010 William Leo Elizabeth Deane 💍 1881/210 William Ross Swanston Elizabeth Gillan 💍 1880/2990 William Skelton Elizabeth Graham 💍 1880/155 William Stewart Elizabeth Home 💍 1880/783 William Haresnape Elizabeth Watson 💍 1880/1903 William Bunbury Elizabeth Atkinson 💍 1880/525	Bachelor Widow	Butcher	39 45	Tinakori Road Sydney	2 years 4 years	St Pauls Church			20 September 1878	Rev. B.W. Harvey

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).