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 1076

District of Unknown Quarter ending 1880

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
12	12 February 1880	James Allen Dodd Catherine Campbell	James Allen Dodd Catherine Campbell 💍 1880/1147	Bachelor Spinster	Butcher Domestic Servant	21 17	Invercargill Invercargill	12 years 4 years	At the Primitive Methodist Church	89/570	Martin Campbell, father	12 February 1880	Rev. C.E. Ward
13	12 February 1880	George Tweedy Queale Eliza Hall Blakie	George Tweedy Queale Eliza Hall Blakie 💍 1880/1366	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	26 24	Ryal Bush Ryal Bush	3 years 14 years	At the house of Peter Jas G. Paterson	87/420		13 February 1880	Rev. J.G. Paterson
14	14 February 1880	Philip Charles Lee Elizabeth Glen	Philip Charles Lee Elizabeth Glen 💍 1880/1365	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Domestic Servant	21 18	Invercargill Invercargill	18 months 18 months	At the house of Rev. Jas Paterson	89/439	Duncan Glen, father	14 February 1880	Rev. J.G. Paterson
15	16 February 1880	John Valentine Maria Small	John Valentine Maria Small 💍 1880/1032	Bachelor Spinster	Painter Domestic Servant	22 21	Invercargill Invercargill	5 years 21 years	At the Office of the Registrar	80/571		16 February 1880	Arthur L. Henderson, Registrar
16	21 February 1880	Alexander Noble Lindsay Rachel Wesney	Alexander Noble Lindsay Rachel Wesney 💍 1880/1039	Bachelor Spinster	Clerk	20 19	Invercargill East Street Invercargill	18 years 15 years	At the house of Mc.Robert	95/578	Robert Lindsay, father	21 February 1880	Rev. Mr. Gunn
17	25 February 1880	Charles Mann Jane Hastings	Charles Mann Jane Hastings 💍 1880/1367 Charles Kemp Bridget Hastings 💍 1880/2261	Bachelor Spinster	Bushman	34 19	Clifton Otatara Bush	12 months 4 years	At the house of Rev. J.G. Paterson	80/141	John Hastings, father	25 February 1880	Rev. J.G. Paterson

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).