Houdin de Saint-Michel, Michel-Gabriel

HOUDIN DE SAINT-MICHEL, MICHEL-GABRIEL. (1739–1802). Continental officer. France. A lieutenant in the Port-au-Prince Regiment, he resigned in 1776 and became first lieutenant of the Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment on 1 January 1777. After serving against Burgoyne, at Stillwater, at Valley Forge, in the Monmouth Campaign, and at Newport, he was promoted to captain on 28 June 1779 and transferred to Rufus Putnam's Fifth Massachusetts Regiment on 1 January 1781. On 12 June 1783 he joined Sproat's Second Massachusetts Regiment. He was honorably discharged on 1 January 1784. With a strong recommendation from Washington that he deserved a place in the peacetime army, Congress breveted him a major on 8 February 1784. He appears to have gone to France and later returned to America, dying at Albany. Houdin became store-keeper of the U.S. Army in 1801.

SEE ALSO Burgoyne, John; Monmouth, New Jersey; Valley Forge Winter Quarters, Pennsylvania.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boudinier, André. Dictionnaire des officiers de l'armée royale qui ont combattu aux Etats-Unis pendant la guerre d'Indépendance, 1776–1783. Vincennes, France: Service historique de l'armée, 1982.

Contenson, Ludovic de. La Société des Cincinnati de France et la Guerre d'Amérique. Paris: Editions Auguste Picard, 1934.

Ford, Worthington C., et al. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. 34 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904–1937.

Lafayette, Gilbert du Motier de. Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Documents, 1776–1790. Edited by Stanley J. Idzerda, et al. 5 vols. to date. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977–.

Washington, George. Writings of George Washington. Edited by John C. Fitzpatrick. 39 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–1944.

                              revised by Robert Rhodes Crout