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 503

District of Waimea South Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
4	5 April 1880	George Edwards Elizabeth Kilgour	George Edwards Elizabeth Kilgour 💍 1880/1523	Bachelor Widow	Blacksmith	26 25	Foxhill Waimea South 88 Valley Waimea South	2 years 20 years	At the Registrars Office Waimea South	80/1016		5 April 1880	Eliab Baigent Registrar of marriages
5	28 April 1880	Thomas Hodgens Clara Taylor	Thomas Hodgins Clara Taylor 💍 1880/1385	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	22 22	Dovedale Waimea South Baton Waimea South	11 years 17 years	At the Residence of John Taylor, Baton	80/1013		28 April 1880	Rev. William Mahoney Roman Catholic Church
6	3 May 1880	William Rowlings Hocton Emily Sophia Burnett	William Rowlings Hocton Emily Sophia Burnett 💍 1880/705	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith	30 20	Dovedale Waimea South Dovedale Waimea South	2 Weeks 10 Weeks	At the Residence of Richard Burnett, Dovedale	80/1015	Richard Burnett father	3 May 1880	Rev. Charles Moon Church of England
7	11 May 1880	Joseph Price Emma Ma Farlane	Joseph Price Emma McFarlane 💍 1880/1512	Widower Widow	Sawyer	44 34	Foxhill Waimea South Foxhill Waimea South	35 years 35 years	At the Residence of Joseph Price Foxhill	80/1014		11 May 1880	Rev. Charles Moon Church of England
8	25 May 1880	John James Annie Dellow	John James Annie Dellow 💍 1880/1529	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	27 21	Foxhill Waimea South Foxhill Waimea South	26 years 4 days	At the Register Office Waimea South	80/1017		25 May 1880	Eliab Baigent Registrar of marriages
9	21 June 1880	Ralph Moreland Andrews Ellen M Glasson	Ralph Moore Andrews Ellen McGlashen 💍 1880/1530	Bachelor Widow	Farmer	22 27	Brightwater Waimea South Brightwater Waimea South	13 Weeks 9 months	At the Register Office Waimea South	80/1018		21 June 1880	Eliab Baigent Registrar of marriages
10	26 June 1880	Daniel James Alice Hopgood	Daniel James Alice Hopgood 💍 1880/1531	Bachelor Spinster	Carter	29 17	88 valley Waimea South Motupiko Waimea South	26 years 17 years	At the Register Office Waimea South	80/1019	George Hopgood father	26 June 1880	Eliab Baigent Registrar of marriages

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).