Judge Williamson Dunn, from Mercer County, Kentucky, purchased the land area of modern Hanover from the federal government on November 28, 1808. The following year, Dunn resettled his family to the area, which became known as a town as "Dunn's Settlement." This was later renamed as Hanover. A steady flow of settlers then followed, most of them Scots-Irish Presbyterians. They were immigrants and their children, mostly from northern Ireland, who had come to Virginia, then to Kentucky, and finally to the area of Hanover.