General William Henry Harrison ordered Fort Winchester built at the beginning of October 1812, and it was completed on October 15. During the War of 1812, it served as a forward observation post and supply depot for the American army, and until Fort Meigs was completed in 1813, it was the front line against the British and their Indian allies. During the siege of Fort Meigs, it was a rendezvous point for the troops of General Green Clay and Colonel William Dudley. The fort formed a parallelogram measuring 600 by 300 feet, with blockhouses at its four corners and storehouses and a hospital inside the stockade. Captain George Croghan, later the hero of the siege of Fort Stephenson, was one of its commanders, and Colonel Richard M. Johnson trained his Kentucky Mounted Regiment there. The army abandoned the post in the spring of 1815 after the war in the Northwest ended, and settlers soon occupied the old fort, including William Preston and the Robert Shirley family. Defiance's 1822 street grid, laid out by Benjamin Leavell and Horatio Phillips and still followed in the 21st century, outlines the fort's boundaries, with its west wall near Washington Street, east wall near Jefferson, north wall near First Street, and south wall near Third.