Barbara,
You may never find a date of birth for this man, but circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that N. Gurley and Nicholas Gurley are one and the same. First of all, men usually enlisted in their home county, and, except for his wife Nancy, Nicholas appears to be the only Gurley in Wilcox County in 1860, with the first initial "N". When the war started, many men in their thirties did not rush to enlist. When the first Confederate conscription act was passed in April 1862, it applied to men who were between the ages of 18 and 35. Nicholas Gurley would have been exempt from this act due to his age. However, the second act, which was passed on Sept. 27, 1862, raised the age of conscription to 45. Given that N. Gurley was not enlisted until Oct. 1863, and that Nicholas Gurley had a wife and four young girls at home, it is a reasonable assumption that he may have felt a greater responsibility to them than to the war effort. Also, given that he did not enlist in a unit that was originally raised in his home county, it is reasonable to assume that the officer who enlisted him, Maj. Thomas Stone of the 40th Alabama, was on detached service back to the state to round up and enlist as many draft-aged men as possible, regardless of where they lived.