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 905

District of Dunedin 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
332	16 October 1880	William Irvine Jane Anne Clarke	William Irvine Jane Anne Clarke 💍 1880/359	Bachelor Spinster	Merchant	39 21	Dunedin Dunedin	2 years 3 days	In the office of the Registrar of Marriages Dunedin	80/12907		16 October 1880	A.R. Ure Registrar of marriages
333	18 October 1880	Alexander Mitch Sophia Jane Steven	Alexander Mutch Sophia Jane Stevens 💍 1880/340	Bachelor Spinster	Railway Employee Tailoress	31 26	Mornington Dunedin	3 months 2 years	All Saints Church	12864		18 October 1880	Revd A.R. Pitchett Church of England Minister
334	19 October 1880	John Burnow Emma Pearce Ramsden	John Curnon Emma Pearce Ramsden 💍 1880/324	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	28 24	Dunedin Dunedin	10 days 7 weeks	All Saints Church	12862		19 October 1880	A.R. Pitchett Church of England Minister
335	20 October 1880	George Scott Phirza Harriet Elizabeth Havill	George Scott Thirza Harriet Elizabeth Havill 💍 1880/360	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	22 18	Kaikorai Valley Dunedin	12 months 6 years	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages	12908	Phirza Hutchings mother of minor	20 October 1880	A.R. Ure Registrar of Marriages
336	20 October 1880	Robert McCulloch Isabella Rankin	Robert McCulloch Isabella Rankin 💍 1880/346	Bachelor Spinster	Accountant	22 17	Dunedin North East Valley	18 months 3 months	At the house of John Hardoph North East Valley	12870	No person in the Colony to give consent to Minor	4 November 1880	Revd Dr Copeland Presbyterian Minister
337	22 October 1880	James Grant Eliza beth Howat Barson	James Grant Elizabeth Howat Carson 💍 1880/552	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	24 22	Green Island Green Island	3 days 2 months	In the house of George Barson Green Island	12853		22 October 1880	Revd Jn Watt Presbyterian Minister

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).