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 885

District of Dunedin 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
222	6 July 1880	Albert Pierpont Tyler Matilda Anderson	Albert Pierpoint Tyler Matilda Anderson 💍 1880/2854	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	39 21	Dunedin Dunedin	16 days 16 days	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	80/121/43		6 July 1880	A. R. Ure Registrar of Marriages
223	7 July 1880	Charles Richard Berry Susanna Acton	Charles Richard Gorway Susanna Acton 💍 1880/2632	Bachelor Widow	Professor of Music	41 34	Dunedin Dunedin	6 weeks 1 week	In the office of the Registrar of marriages Dunedin	80/121/44		7 July 1880	A. R. Ure Registrar of Marriages
224	7 July 1880	William James Bennewith Catherine Borland	William James Besmuirk Catherine Berland 💍 1880/2508	Bachelor Spinster	Bootmaker Domestic Servant	26 18	Dunedin Dunedin	5 years 17 years	In the house of James Robinson Great King Street Dunedin	80/121/49	Ann Borland Mother of minor	7 July 1880	Revd. J Upton Davis Baptist Minister
225	7 July 1880	John Browson Ellen Tombs	John Crowson Ellen Tombs 💍 1880/2849	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer Domestic Servant	38 22	Ravensbourne Ravensbourne	2 years 6 years	In the house of John Lovell Ravensbourne	80/121/45		7 July 1880	Revd J Niven Presbyterian minister
226	8 July 1880	John Duncan Moore Helen Lindsay Grant	John Duncan Moore Helen Lindsay Shand 💍 1880/3001	Bachelor Spinster	Accountant	26 22	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 3 days	Knox Church Dunedin	80/121/48		8 July 1880	Revd. Stewart Presbyterian Minister
227	9 July 1880	Thomas Shield Mary Murphy	Thomas Shield Mary Murphy 💍 1880/2643	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor Housemaid	32 22	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 6 years	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	80/121/51		9 July 1880	A. R. Ure 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).