The young Rutherford made his grandmother a wooden potato masher, which was believed to have been made during the school holidays. It has been held in the collection of the Royal Society since 1888.
In 1900, Rutherford married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1954), to whom he had become engaged before leaving New Zealand, at St Pauls Anglican Church, Papanui in Christchurch. They had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married the physicist Ralph Fowler. Rutherfords hobbies included golf and motoring.
For some time before his death, Rutherford had a small hernia, which he neglected to have fixed, and it became strangulated, rendering him violently ill. Despite an emergency operation in London, he died four days afterwards, at Cambridge on 19 October 1937 at age 66, of what physicians termed "intestinal paralysis". After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium, he was given the high honour of burial in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton and other illustrious British scientists such as Charles Darwin.