The fifth child (and fourth son) of the ten children of John Jordan (1805-1892) and Ellen Millon (or Millen) Jordan (1807-1870), Irish immigrants to America, Nathaniel was born in the textile town of Stockport - Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England - and baptized there on 13 Oct. 1839. He died in Mississippi fighting for the Union in the Civil War. His father was a fancy-print textile worker (in Ireland, England, and America - see his memorial for details) until the family moved to homestead in Minnesota in 1856.

Nathaniel and his brother John were among sixteen men from Wacouta, MN who enlisted for the Civil War (see "History of Goodhue Co MN," pg. 218). Nathaniel enlisted in Company A, Minnesota 5th Infantry Regiment on 27 Jan 1862; he was 23 years old.

It is uncertain whether Nathaniel married before he went to war. Some records indicate Nathaniel may have had a wife named Ellen (born about 1842 in England) and a child, born in 1861 in MN, named Lily. There is a child named Lillie living with John and Ellen Millen Jordan, and some of her aunts, uncles and cousins, at the John Jordan farm in Wacouta, MN right after the war, as recorded in the 1865 MN state census.

The Jordan family sent three sons to the war - Nathaniel, Patrick, and John. Nathaniel died at the battle of Corinth in Mississippi. John returned, wounded, to Minnesota. Patrick did not long survive the war and suffered in a war prison. John Jordan long mourned the loss of his boys. In his narrative in "The History of Goodhue County, MN" he included a poem he wrote memorializing Nathaniel.

It is possible that Nathaniel's name was William Nathaniel or Nathaniel William, as some censuses show a son of the right age with one of those names, and others with the other one.