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 582

District of Hokitika 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
857	1 July 1880	John Quinn Bridget Magle	John Quinn Bridget Neagle 💍 1880/2378	Bachelor Spinster	Engine Driver Domestic	32 22	Hokitika Ditto	14 years 6 years	St. Mary's Church, R.C., Hokitika	80/943		1 July 1880	Rev. P.A. Martin
858	14 July 1880	James Orr Mary Ann Frahau	James Orr Mary Ann Graham 💍 1880/2374	Bachelor Widow	Miner Domestic	35 25	Three mile creek Hokitika	5 years 6 months	Office of the Registrar, Hokitika	80/969		14 July 1880	David P. James, Registrar
859	16 July 1880	Antoni Skin Veronia Polaklovsky		Bachelor Spinster	Labourer General Servant	28 22	Kanieri Kanieri	4 years 4 years	St. Mary's Church, R.C., Hokitika	80/974		16 July 1880	Rev. P.A. Martin
860	22 July 1880	Thomas Jackson Lucy Goodyear	Thomas Jackson Lucy Goodyear 💍 1880/2375	Bachelor Widow	Miner Domestic	48 46	Woodstock Woodstock	2 years 5 days	Office of the Registrar, Hokitika	80/990		22 July 1880	David P. James, Registrar
861	23 July 1880	Frederick Billoughty Abigail Bentick	Frederick Willoughby Abigail Bentick 💍 1880/2376	Bachelor Spinster	Miner Domestic	43 42	Woodstock Woodstock	10 years 10 years	Office of the Registrar, Hokitika	80/991		23 July 1880	David P. James, Registrar
862	27 July 1880	William Christian Sarah Cassidy	William Christian Julius Kortegarb Sarah Cassidy 💍 1880/2315	Bachelor Spinster	Brewer Barmaid	36 22	Hokitika Hokitika	14 years 5 years	Private Residence of Jas. Blake, Gibson Quay, Hokitika	80/995		29 July 1880	Rev. P.A. Martin
863	16 August 1880	Charles Edgar Greville Emma Mary Surprise Wood	Charles Edgar Greville Emma Mary Morrice Ward 💍 1880/2371	Bachelor Spinster	Compositor Domestic	21 18	Hokitika Hokitika	9 years 12 years	All Saints Church, Hokitika	80/1007	Emma Relf, her mother	16 August 1880	Rev. J.K. Davis
864	3 August 1880	Arthur Richard Daplyn Marion Lee	Arthur Richard Daplyn Marion Lee 💍 1880/743	Bachelor Spinster	Chemist & Druggist No occupation	24 22	Hokitika Stafford	8 months 1 week	Office of the Registrar of Marriages, Goldsborough	Stafford District/80/1013		3 August 1880	The Registrar of Marriages, Goldsborough

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).