Intentions to Marry, 1881

Reference: Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Notices of intention to marry, Series 8937, R2840393, Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga, Wellington

Imaged by Luke at Archives NZ Wellington, January 31 2025

Page 1163

District of Invercargill Quarter ending 31 December 1881

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
95	1 November 1881	William Phillips Ellen Pay	William Phillips Ellen Pay 💍 1881/3210	Bachelor Spinster	Engineer Domestic Servant	23 21	Invercargill Invercargill	14 months 14 years	At the Office of the Registrar Invercargill	81/13147		4 November 1881	Arthur C. Henderson Registrar
96	1 November 1881	Thomas Moore Arthur Harriet Mary Ann Swale	Thomas Moore Arthur Harriet Maryann Swale 💍 1881/3211	Bachelor Spinster	Railway Employee	21 20	Woodlands Woodlands	18 years 20 years	At the house of Mr M. A. Swale, Woodlands	81/3148	Mary Ann Swale, mother	4 November 1881	Thomas Alexander Presbyterian Minister
97	10 November 1881	William Logan Mary Ann Blokesy	William Logan Mary Ann Clohsey 💍 1881/123	Bachelor Widow	Farmer Housekeeper	34 24	Invercargill Invercargill	4 days 4 days	At the house of Revd. J. Ferguson Invercargill	81/3129		10 November 1881	John Ferguson Presbyterian Minister
98	10 November 1881	John William Fitzmaurice Mary Mountford	John William Fitzmaurice Mary Nutsford 💍 1881/3220	Bachelor Spinster	Contractor	28 23	Invercargill Invercargill	3 weeks 3 weeks	At the Roman Catholic Church Invercargill	81/3135		10 November 1881	Thomas McEnroe Roman Catholic Minister
99	24 November 1881	John McCall Marian Warnock	John McCall Marian Warnock 💍 1881/3199	Bachelor Spinster	Farmer	34 25	Invercargill One Tree Point	5 days 13 years	At the house of Mr D. Warnock One Tree Point	81/3134		24 November 1881	C. E. Ward Primitive Methodist Minister
100	26 November 1881	John Evans Charlotte Lethaby	John Evans Charlotte Lethaby 💍 1881/3216	Bachelor Spinster	Bricklayer	23 16	Invercargill Invercargill	3 years 6 months	At the house of Rev. C. E. Ward Invercargill	81/3131	John Lethaby, Guardian	26 November 1881	C. E. Ward Primitive Methodist Minister

These records have been automatically transcribed and must be verified using the page image (below)

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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 1894. More registers will be added as the project continues.

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).