which did not end until years after his third marriage, left the senior Nathan with little to no inheritance. In 1893, the now 54 year old widower married 28-year-old Nina Elizabeth Pinchback, another wealthy young woman of color. She was born in New Orleans as the third child of Nina Emily Hawthorne and politician P. B. S. Pinchback, both of mixed heritage. Her father was suspicious of Nathan Toomer and strongly opposed his daughter's choice for marriage, but ultimately acquiesced. Born from this union and named Nathan after his father, Toomer would later use "Jean" as his first name at the start his literary career. Early life Toomer's father soon abandoned his wife and his young son, returning to Georgia seeking to obtain a portion of his late second wife's estate. Nina divorced him and took back her maiden name of Pinchback; she and her son returned to live with her parents in Washington D.C. Angered by her husband's abandonment, Nina's father insisted they use another name for her son and started calling him Eugene, after the boy's godfather. He received a variety of nicknames by various family members. Toomer would see his father only once more in 1897 before Nathan Sr.'s death in 1906. As a child in Washington D.C., Toomer attended segregated Black schools. After his mother remarried, they moved to suburban New Rochelle, New York and the youth began to attend an all-white school. After his mother's death in 1909, when he was 15, Toomer returned to D.C. to live with his maternal grandparents. He graduated from the M Street High School, a prestigious academic Black high school in the city with a national reputation. Education Between 1914 and 1917, Jean attended six institutions of higher education (the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the City College of New York) studying agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history, but he never completed a degree. His wide readings among prominent contemporary poets and writers, and the lectures he attended during his college years, shaped the direction of his writing. Career After leaving college, Toomer returned to Washington, DC. He published some short stories and continued writing during the volatile social period following World War I. He worked for some months in a shipyard in 1919, then escaped to middle-class life. Labor