Nathaniel Kettle was born in 1776 in England.
He married Elizabeth Dye on 26 October 1800, at St. Peter's, Sandwich, Kent.
In the Kentish Chronicle of 18 December 1804, the following notice was published:
NATHANIEL KETTLE.
LINEN WEAVER and FLAX DRESSER, Delph-street, Sandwich, having taken the business of Mr. Thomas Bundock, begs leave to solicit the favours of the public.—Manufactures and sells the following articles on the most reasonable terms – hop-bagging, hop-pocketing, corn, flour, and bran sacks, biscuit bags, sacking bottoms, hair cloth, ash cloth, and cream cloth, tarpaulin and mill sail, huckaback table linen, dowlas sheetings, lines, twines, lay cord, packthread, box cord, bed cord, flax, hemp, tow, &c. &c.
Later Nathaniel had a rope-making business in Sandwich, Kent. An entry in the London Gazette, May 1819, is a notice "that the Copartnership hitherto subsisting at Deal and Walmer next Deal, in the County of Kent, between us the undersigned, John Claringbould and Nathaniel Kettle, as Rope-Makers, was dissolved on 15th day of May instant..."
In 1839, Nathaniel Kettle was advertised as an Agent for the New Zealand Land Company, at No. 5, Priory Terrace, Dover.
Nathaniel's son Thomas is recorded as a Rope Maker in the 1851 census.
In 1851, Nathaniel is recorded as a "Proprietor of Houses".
Nathaniel died in 1860, and is buried at the Boatsman Hill Cemetery, Sandwich.