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 439

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
17	25 February 1880	Archibald Mitchell Mary Stevenson	Archibald McMillan Mary Stevenson 💍 1880/1184	Bachelor Spinster	Shepherd	35 20	Napier Napier	5 days 7 months	House of the Revd D Sidey Napier	733	No Parent or Guardian in the Colony	25 February 1880	Revd D Sidey
18	25 February 1880	Frederick James Smith Hannah Downey	Fredrick James Smith Hannah Dawney 💍 1880/1216	Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	31 29	Port Ahuriri Napier	6 years 1 Week	House of J M Dougall Napier	659		25 February 1880	Rev W C Oliver
19	27 February 1880	Andrew George Dominick Clara Jane Newbegin		Bachelor Spinster	Storeman	29 17	Port Ahuriri Napier	3 years 5 years	House of Revd D Sidey Napier	80/843/653		27 February 1880	Revd D Sidey
20	1 March 1880	William Black Mary Moffle	William Black Mary Nettle 💍 1880/1191 William Black Mary Ann Lye 💍 1880/261 William Black Mary Arthur 💍 1880/325	Bachelor Spinster	Road Overseer	32 24	Napier Napier	14 years 3 years	House of Revd D Sidey Napier	684/658		1 March 1880	Revd D Sidey
21	8 March 1880	Charles Robert Taylor Prudence Tuckwell	Charles Robert Taylor Prudence Tuckwell 💍 1880/1301	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker	29 19	Hastings Napier	1 year 6 years	House of Mr Tuckwell Napier	646	William Tuckwell father	8 March 1880	Rev G Penny
22	12 March 1880	Mark Martin Elizabeth Anna Linden	Mark Martin Elizabeth Anna Linden 💍 1880/1310	Bachelor Spinster	Gardener	25 26	Napier Napier	8 days 5 days	House of Mr James Linden	81/654		12 March 1880	Rev W C Oliver
23	31 March 1880	Henry Sharman Elizabeth Harsley	Henry Howson Elizabeth Hart 💍 1880/1754 Henry Richards Elizabeth Kinsman 💍 1880/1014 Henry Walden Elizabeth Wood 💍 1880/337	Bachelor Spinster	Wireworker	25 23	Napier Napier	3 years 3 years	House of Mr John Alderson			31 March 1880	Rev G Penny

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).