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 800

District of Oamaru Quarter ending Oct - Dec

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
850	5 October 1880	James Drummond Thomasina Shearlaw Ritchie	James Drummond Thomasina Shearlaw Ritchie 💍 1880/378	Bachelor Spinster	Machinist	24 21	Oamaru Oamaru	7 days 7 days	The Manse	80/12824		9 October 1880	Rev. A. B. Todd
851	12 October 1880	Andrew Graham Matilda Foster	Andrew Graham Matilda Foster 💍 1880/497	Bachelor Spinster	Wheelwright Servant	25 24	Oamaru Oamaru	21 months 21 months	The Office of the Registrar of Marriages at Oamaru	80/13073		12 October 1880	The Registrar of Marriages
852	16 October 1880	Edward Perry Annie Murdoch		Bachelor Spinster	Optical Instrument Maker Dressmaker	23 18	Oamaru Oamaru	6 months 5 weeks	Wesley Church Oamaru		No person in the Colony to give consent	October 1880	Rev. D. McLennan
853	18 October 1880	Michael McLoughlin Mary Power	Michael McLaughlin Mary Power 💍 1880/386	Bachelor Spinster	Navvy Servant	26 19	Oamaru Oamaru	5 years 2 years	St. Patrick's Church, Oamaru	80/12834	Jeremiah Power, Father	18 October 1880	Rev. William Coleman, Roman Catholic
854	23 October 1880	John Falls Margaret McLean	John Walls Margaret McLean 💍 1880/384	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	23 19	Oamaru Papakaio	5 years 2 years	The Residence of Mr. Richard Wilson at Papakaio	80/12832	Margaret Wilson, Mother	25 October 1880	Rev. John Steven, Presbyterian
855	29 October 1880	John Fred Helmkey Jane Manns	John Jacob Helinkey Jane Maw 💍 1880/383	Bachelor Widow	Seaman Boarding House Keeper	31 37	Oamaru Oamaru	3 months 9 months	The Primitive Methodist Church at Oamaru	80/12831		29 October 1880	Rev. Charles Edward Barley, Primitive Methodist
856	30 October 1880	Francis Gibson Patterson Clara Isabella Foster	Francis Gibson Parsonson Clara Isabella Fowler 💍 1880/540	Bachelor Spinster	Temperance Hotel Keeper	23 19	Oamaru Oamaru	3 days 7 weeks	St. Luke's Church Oamaru	80/12994	No person in the Colony to give consent	15 November 1880	Revd. Algernon Gifford, Church of England
857	2 November 1880	Thomas Walter Bretner Emily Headland	Thomas Walter Brebner Emily Headland 💍 1880/539	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	26 18	Oamaru Oamaru	5 years 18 years	St. Luke's Church Oamaru	80/12993	Alfred James Samuel Headland - Father	22 November 1880	Revd. Algernon Gifford, Church of England

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).