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 1097

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
79	22 October 1880	William Henry Palmer Frances Gower formerly Horscroft	William Henry Palmer Frances Gower 💍 1880/440	Bachelor Widow	Laborer	49 51	East Invercargill East Invercargill	1 year 4 years	At the Office of the Registrar Invercargill	80/13015		22nd October 1880	Arthur H Couzens Registrar
80	31 October 1880	James Bowie Emma Wilkes	James Cowie Emma Wilkes 💍 1880/441	Bachelor Spinster	Miller	42 39	Invercargill Invercargill	1 year 9 weeks	At the Office of the Registrar Invercargill	80/13016		31st October 1880	Arthur H Couzens Registrar
81	4 November 1880	Daniel McMillan Ellen Ryan	Daniel McMillan Ellen Ryan 💍 1880/532	Bachelor Spinster	Blacksmith Domestic Servant	24 22	Invercargill Invercargill	4 days 4 days	At the house of Rev Jno Ferguson	80/13009		4th November 1880	Rev Jno Ferguson Presbyterian Minister
82	10 November 1880	William Veint Ellen McMaster	William Veint Ellen McMaster 💍 1880/442	Bachelor Spinster	Laborer	39 23	Invercargill Invercargill	19 years 4 years	At the Office of the Registrar Invercargill	80/13017		10th November 1880	Arthur H Couzens Registrar
83	15 November 1880	Thomas Alexander Walker Margaret Barham formerly Thomson	Thomas Alexander Walker Margaret Barham 💍 1880/446	Bachelor Widow	Builder	36 31	Invercargill Invercargill	2 years 14 years	At the house of Mr Wm Tapley Yarrow Street	80/13037		15th November 1880	Rev Jas Paterson Presbyterian minister
84	23 November 1880	Thomas Lewis Mary Cameron	Thomas Lewis Mary Cameron 💍 1880/523	Bachelor Spinster	Carpenter Domestic Servant	22 18	Invercargill Invercargill	3 years 5 years	At the house of James Cameron Averal	80/13077	Jno Cameron Father	23rd November 1880	Rev A R D Pnnn Wesleyan 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).