After frequent travels, the senior Nathan Toomer abandoned his wife and son, and returned to Georgia. Unable to pay alimony, he was seeking to gain some of his late second wife's estate. Nina divorced him and took back her name of Pinchback; she and her son returned to live with her parents. At that time, angered by her husband's abandonment, her father insisted they use another name for her son and started calling him Eugene, after the boy's godfather. The boy also was given a variety of nicknames by various family members. He saw his father once in 1897 in Washington, DC after he had gone to Georgia; the father died in 1906.