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 437

District of Napier 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
1	5 January 1880	Andrew Taylor Mary Jane Roach	Andrew Taylor Mary Jane Roache 💍 1880/1680 Thomas Taylor Mary Jane Shout 💍 1880/2427	Bachelor Spinster	Seaman	25 23	Portahurine Napier	4 years 1 year	St Marys Chapel	80/112		5 January 1880	Mr Grogan
2	12 January 1880	Petrus Eriksen Jane Short Eriksen	Petrus Eriksen Josephine Christine Hansen 💍 1880/1300	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	23 18	Napier Napier	5 days 6 years	House of [UNCLEAR] L Hansen	645	Samuel Hansen, father	12 January 1880	Rev G Sass
3	12 January 1880	William Rose Mary Ann Letty Howard	William Rose Mary Ann Letty Howard 💍 1880/1302	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher	29 19	Taradale Taradale	10 months 12 years	All Saint Church	80/266 644	Henry Howard, father	12 January 1880	[UNCLEAR]
4	14 January 1880	Thomas Garrett Elizabeth Mary Keenan	Thomas Garrett Elizabeth Mary Keenan 💍 1880/1307	Bachelor Spinster	Storekeeper	30 19	Napier Napier	3 years 2 years	Wesleyan Parsonage	631	No Parents or Guardians in the Colony	14 January 1880	Rev W. C. Oliver
5	21 January 1880	James Turton Maggie Evans	James Turton Margaret Evans 💍 1880/1217	Bachelor Spinster	Ploughman	39 30	Napier Napier	7 days 4 months	St Johns Church	80/300 660		21 January 1880	Rev De Bird Howell
6	26 January 1880	William Merrick Anora Murphy	William Meyrick Anora Murphy 💍 1880/1218	Bachelor Spinster	Packer	21 18	Napier Napier	7 years 12 years	St Johns Church	80/325 661	Anora Clifden, mother	26 January 1880	Rev De Berdt Howell
7	28 January 1880	Carl Albert Fabrituis Elizabeth Gertrude Barker	Carl Albert Fabritius Elizabeth Gertrude Bartlett 💍 1880/1219	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	27 24	Waikonini Waikonini	4 years 1 month	St Johns Church	676		28 January 1880	Rev De Berd Howell
8	29 January 1880	George Mallinson Reid Annie Maria Eighteen	George William Kendall Annie Maria Wrightson 💍 1880/1308	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	24 21	Portahurine Napier	4 years 3 years	House of D Young	652		29 January 1880	Rev W. C. Oliver

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).