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 926

District of Port Chalmers Quarter ending Apr - Jun

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
9	15 April 1880	Alexander Grain Annie Amelia Ruffel	Alexander Main Annie Amelia Ruffell 💍 1880/1941 Alexander Fraser Annie Helena Falloon 💍 1880/194	Bachelor Spinster	Railway Clerk	30 21	Mount Street Port Chalmers Grey Street Port Chalmers	3 years 18 months	At the House of Mrs Waters	80/1396		15 April 1880	Rev Wm Johnston Presbyterian Minister of Otago.
10	16 April 1880	Newton Hall Mary Allen	Newton Watt Mary Allen 💍 1880/1942	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer	32 33	Belle Vue Place Port Chalmers do	4 days 2 years	At the House of	80/1397		16 April 1880	Thos Bracken Congregational Independent Minister
11	26 April 1880	James Cummins Grousson Sarah Hogarth	James Cumins Moriton Sarah Hogarth 💍 1880/1923	Bachelor Spinster	Second Mate Dressmaker	24 27	Ship "Daman" Port Chalmers Napier Terrace Port Chalmers	18	At the Dwelling House of Mrs McDonald	80/1394		28 April 1880	Rev Mr Johnstone Presbyterian Minister of Otago.
12	19 May 1880	Francis Shaw Smith Thirza Williams	Francis Blew Smith Thirza Williams 💍 1880/1943	Bachelor Spinster	Surveyor Milliner	23 17	Sawyers Bay near Port Chalmers George Street Sawyers Bay	1 year 3 weeks	At the House of Mr Smith Senr	80/1398	Wm Williams the Father	19 May 1880	Rev Jas Maxwell Congregational Independent Minister
13	1 June 1880	John Hay Janet Dunsmure Houston	John Hay Janet Dunsmuir 💍 1880/1934	Bachelor Spinster	Labourer	30 18	George Street Port Chalmers Magnetic Street Port Chalmers	18 months	At the House of John Dunsmure	80/1395	John Dunsmure the Father	1 June 1880	Rev Jno Johnstone Presbyterian Minister of Otago
14	21 June 1880	James Ivor Selina Yeoman	James McIver Selina Yeoman 💍 1880/729	Bachelor Spinster	Miner	29 21	Purankanui do	3 days 14 years	At the House of Mr Jas Yeoman	80/1/13	R. S. Hatts her sponsor	21 June 1880	Revd R. S. Hatts Ch 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).