Nathan Bryan
Nathan Bryan was born on 16 June 1757 in Halifax County, North Carolina, the son of Jesse Bryan and Zipporah Hinton. The family lived in Martin County, on the Roanoke River. Both parents named him in their wills: his father, who died in 1786, left him land joining his own on the south side of the swamp, and his mother, in 1792, left him the money of hers he was holding in Georgia. On 19 October 1779 Nathan witnessed a deed there for Micajah and Mary Little, and in another Martin County deed his father sold fifty acres on the Savannah and Persimmon Branch to Moses Bryan with Nathan as a witness.
On 27 September 1777 he married Rebecca Little, born in Bertie County in 1760. He served as a private soldier in the Revolution, under General Nathanael Greene, by the family account. The land lottery records of Wilkes County, Georgia, later named a Nathan Bryan among that county's Revolutionary soldiers.
After the war the family went south to Georgia. On 21 August 1782 the governor and council of Georgia issued two bushels of salt to Nathan Bryan in Wilkes County, by order of the deputy quartermaster general. Salt was scarce and precious in wartime Georgia, and the state paid it out to soldiers and supporters.
Nathan settled on Lick Creek, a branch of Little River, in Wilkes County. The tax digests of 1794 to 1796 list him in the militia district of Captain James Turner with 400 acres of third-quality land on Lick Creek, adjoining Elijah Pugh, and 200 acres more on Rocky Creek in Washington County. On 26 February 1795 Isaac Stocks sold him 200 acres on Lick Creek for fifty pounds, witnessed by Micajah Little and Daniel Williams. On 10 February 1797 Thomas Heard sold him another 200 acres on Lick Creek for sixty pounds, "including plantation where Nathan now lives." Clerks wrote the name both Bryan and Bryant.
Nathan and Rebecca had a large family. Their children included Little Bryan, 1780, named with his mother's maiden name; Rachel, 1782, who married a Blackburn; Jesse, who married Lucinda; Elias, who married Elizabeth Perkins; Sarah, 1795, who married Allen Duncan; John Walker, 1797, who married Rebecca Price; Benjamin Franklin, born on 15 March 1800, who married Roxana Price; James, who married Mary Price; and Mary Ann, 1803, who married William D. King. Three of the sons married Price sisters. Benjamin Franklin, who used the spelling Bryant, went to Texas in 1834, fought at San Jacinto and founded Bryant Station.
In his last years Nathan lived in Pike County, Georgia, between Griffin and Orchard Hill. On 5 April 1830, "in good health and in perfect mind and memory," he made his will with his mark. He left two dollars each to his sons Little, Jesse, John and Benjamin, to his daughter Sally Duncan, to his son-in-law Solomon Watson and to the heirs of his son James, deceased, and two dollars to his daughter Mary Ann King. Everything else went to his wife Rebecca for her life, then to be divided among the same children. He asked that two of his slaves, Willis and Sophia, "be sold together and never to be parted during life." He named his sons Little and Jesse executors.
He died before the end of August 1834. On 21 August that year his son Benjamin, then of Houston County, sold his share of "my father Nathan Bryan Estate" to William King, and the will was proved in the Pike County court on 1 September 1834. He was buried on his own land.
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Cite: Heirology, "Nathan Bryan (b. 1757)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/nathan-bryan-1757-a301ac.