[2] Hanover House was built by Paul de St. Julien, an ethnic French Huguenot, on land by the Cooper River that was a 1688 grant to his grandfather by the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina.

St. Julien named the house Hanover in honor of the House of Hanover, which had ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain,[3] "to show his appreciation for that country which had befriended so many Huguenot refugees after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In the 1930s the state proposed a project to construct a dam on the Cooper River for flood control and hydroelectric power, creating Lake Moultrie.

In 1994, the house was dismantled again and relocated to the South Carolina Botanical Garden on the university campus.

[5] The Hanover House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1970.