Hanson continued his education at the American Conservatory with Frank Van Dusen, and at Lawrence College (now Lawrence University) with Mason Slade. Following high school he continued to play both piano and organ at various functions, most often in the Waupaca area movie houses. The second composition was the Home Coming Song, written for his senior class. Still composing, Eddy managed to get a song in print at age 17, and another one the following year. Late in the year the family moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where they spent the next few years, then to Waupaca around 1915. He also played more frequently at local dances, and was starting to perform for movies as well in local theaters several nights a week. (The couple would divorce in the mid-1910s.) Eddy was attending Waupaca High School and was listed as a member of the high school paper, The Criterian. In the 1910 census the reconfigured family was still residing in Farmington with August as an engineer in the Wisconsin Veteran's Home. Hanson, who was only five years older than Eddy. By early 1910 August had remarried to Katherine M. Two years after his youngest sister was born, Eddy's mother Henrietta died in October of 1908. The family appeared in the 1900 enumeration in Farmington, Wisconsin, with August listed as a stationery engineer. August had some good sense of music, perhaps even some training from his youth, and was insistent that Ethwell learn the elements of proper rhythm and harmony, plus the exacting discipline to play cleanly. It was obvious that a piano would help keep the kitchen ware in better working order, so one was obtained. At an early age the boy became entranced with the music that spewed forth from a neighbor's Edison Amberola, and after listening to a selection or two would run home and try to emulate the rhythms on pots and pans. (2/1899), Charlotte Agnes () and Loyal McKinley () respectively. Over the next few years Ethwell would gain three sisters and brother, Nioleta May (), Arleen V. August was a mechanical engineer whose family had immigrated from Denmark when he was eight years old, and Henrietta was a Wisconsin native. He was born Ethwell Hanson to August Hanson and Henrietta May Jones in New London, Wisconsin, right around the time that the 1893 Chicago Exposition was featuring some of the first ragtime heard publicly. In the interim, he did pretty well for himself and cut a nice-sized swath through the Midwest via the airwaves. In a case of delayed but realized expectations, Eddy Hanson did not become known as a ragtime composer until 35 years after his first real rag.
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