Nancy Averette Bryan was born April 26, 1834, in Houston County, Georgia, the fifth child and first daughter of James A. and Catharine H. Bryan. When her father died in March 1847, she was twelve years old.

Nancy received her education at the Monroe Female College in Culloden, Georgia — later moved to Forsyth and renamed, now Bessie Tift College. The estate returns document payments to John Darby across several years; he may have been a teacher at the college. Board and medical care in Culloden are recorded separately from the tuition payments.

Nancy graduated with first honor in her class. After graduation, fifteen dollars was handed to her in August 1853 for a Georgia sulphur spring health resort. Clothing purchased in Macon that October — thirty-three dollars plus traveling expenses. She was nineteen years old and between a diploma and a marriage.

On October 18, 1855, Nancy Averette Bryan married Wilkinson M. Whitehurst in Houston County, Georgia. On March 1, 1856, the estate formally distributed her share to her husband: land valued at $681, the mule Martha at $130, and the rosewood piano at $260 — the instrument purchased for the family in December 1849. It left the house that day and went with Nancy to Wilkinson County.

The Whitehursts made their home on their plantation on The Ridge, two and a half miles north of Gordon, Georgia. Wilkinson M. had served as a Georgia State Senator in 1859–60 and held the office of Judge of the Inferior Court of Wilkinson County from January 10, 1861.

In July 1861, the estate records two Bryan sisters traveling to Wilkinson County — $1.50 in traveling expenses, the destination and the year all the ledger gives. Wilkinson M. was away — serving as judge and with the State Guard cavalry. Nancy was at The Ridge with their children.

Four miles east of Macon, in November 1864, Sherman's right flank came through Griswoldville and burned what was there — including the gin works where Samuel Griswold had repaired the Bryan plantation's cotton gin in 1853. Confederate pistols had been made there during the war. The Lynton Book carries the soldier's account of what followed:

The army moved east from Griswoldville toward Savannah. Nancy's plantation on The Ridge lay on the path. Sherman's officers made their headquarters there. When the columns moved on, they left everything desolate. Three of her sisters traveled to Gordon in the months that followed — Honora in June 1864, Catharine P. in January 1865, Laura in February 1865 — twenty dollars each from the estate in traveling expenses. The ledger records the amounts. What they found is not in any document.

Wilkinson M. rebuilt. In January 1866 he built and equipped, entirely at his own expense, a large two-story school building near the Central of Georgia Railroad — Whitehurst Academy, a mile and a half south of Gordon. For two years he and Nancy taught the school themselves, for the children of the county and for young men and women who had been deprived of an education by the war. A music teacher was secured. Nancy's piano was used for instruction in music. Whitehurst Academy became the center of culture and learning in that section.

Wilkinson M. Whitehurst died July 30, 1878, at their home on The Ridge. Nancy was forty-four years old. She outlived him twenty-six years. They had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. One of their daughters, Thulia Katherine, married James Dowdell Myrick. Their daughter was Susan Myrick.

Susan Myrick was Margaret Mitchell's friend and the technical advisor on the film set of Gone With the Wind. The Atlanta premiere was December 15, 1939. The Lynton Book opens there — in the audience, a woman watching a story about a Georgia plantation house and a war and a woman who would not be finished by it, making notes in the dark about a real house she had inherited on a road in Houston County.

Nancy Averette Bryan — first daughter, first honor, The Ridge, Sherman's headquarters, Whitehurst Academy — is the thread that runs from the 1832 house to that screen.

Nancy Averette Whitehurst died November 10, 1904, in Gordon, Wilkinson County, Georgia. She was seventy years old. She is buried at Whitehurst Cemetery, Wilkinson County, Georgia. Find a Grave memorial 115338070.