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 918

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	Date of Certificate	Officiating Minister
407	24 December 1880	Alexander Crawford Margaret Ritchie	Alexander Crawford Margaret Ritchie 💍 1881/534	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk Schoolmistress	31 31	Timaru Dunedin	6 months 3 days	Trinity Church	Timaru 81/472	24 December 1880	Revd. W. Gillies Presbyterian Minister
408	24 December 1880	Henry Eaton Juliam Marion Kerr	Henry Eaton Julia Marion Kerr 💍 1880/473	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	25 21	Mornington Roslyn	5 days 15 years	In the house of Edwards Farmer Eaton	80/12949	24 December 1880	Revd. J. Niven Presbyterian Minister
409	24 December 1880	Robert Black Paterson Sally Anderson	Robert Black Paterson Sally Anderson 💍 1880/352	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith	40 28	Mornington Mornington	3 days 5 years	In the house of Sinclair Swanson	80/12950	24 December 1880	Revd. R. Waddell Presbyterian minister
410	24 December 1880	Charles Deans Elizabeth Ann Watson	Charles Deans Elizabeth Muir Watson 💍 1880/555	Widower Spinster	Letter Domestic Servant	36 26	Mount Cargill Green Island	11 years 4 days	In the house of John Watson	81/2857	24 December 1880	Revd. Jn. Watt Presbyterian Minister
411	28 December 1880	Henry Radley Jane Desmond	Henry Radley Jane Desmond 💍 1880/29	Bachelor Widow	Laborer	29 35	Dunedin Dunedin	6 months 3 years	In the Office of the Registrar of Marriages	80/12925	28 December 1880	A. R. Ure Registrar of Marriages
412	28 December 1880	William Hall Touch Mary Dove Dunn	William Hall Zonch Mary Dove Dunn 💍 1881/596	Bachelor Spinster	Journalist	31 23	Dunedin Dunedin	3 days 6 years	In All Saints Church	81/5746	28 December 1880	Revd. H. R. Fitchett Church of England 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).