In 1854 a certain Josiah Brown Secord from Chinguacousy Township, near Brampton, Ont., settled in that area. The place was named after the Bulgarian fortress Varna, a port from which thousands of soldiers in the years of the Crimean War sailed towards the battlefield in the Crimea. Josiah's father Stephen was Laura Secord's nephew and the Secords were lineal descendants of the Huguenots in France. Initially Varna and its surrounding area were a part of the Huron lands owned by a Canadian company set up by John Galt in 1826. Formerly those barren lands had been the home of the Chippewa Indians who later on sold that place.