LECLAIRE

Mengin appears during the fourteenth century — a period shaped by plague, the Hundred Years' War, the schism of the Western Church and persistent political instability across the Duchy of Lorraine and the wider Kingdom of France.

He should be described as the first known documentary figure in the Le Clerc line, appearing not as a peasant, but as a man connected to property and lesser noble society. Through his wife Catherine he became linked to one of the more established landholding networks of the region.

The fourteenth century was a period of profound change across Europe. Lorraine occupied a strategic position between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, making it a region of significant political and military importance. Noble families such as the Girecourts, Pullignys, and Le Clercs formed part of the local aristocracy that governed estates, administered justice, and supported their feudal overlords.

Unlike many later noble claims that emerged during the early modern period, the connections surrounding Mengin Le Clerc are rooted in medieval records and hereditary alliances. These marriages were not simply personal relationships but formed part of a broader network of noble kinship that shaped the political landscape of Lorraine for centuries.

Mengin is the earliest securely identifiable ancestor of the House. With him the documented genealogical record of the Le Clerc — and therefore of the modern LeClaire — begins.

Mengin Le Clerc represents more than an early ancestor. He is one of the first individuals for whom surviving evidence demonstrates the family's place amongst the noble houses of Lorraine. His marriage to Catherine de Girecourt, combined with the later development of the Le Clerc de Pulligny branch, provides compelling evidence that the family already possessed recognised status within medieval society.

Rather than being the recipient of noble status through marriage, Mengin appears to have been a member of the same aristocratic milieu. His descendants would continue this tradition, ultimately producing the distinguished Le Clerc de Pulligny and later Le Clerc de Juigné branches that appear throughout French noble history.

Every subsequent generation of the House — the Sieurs de Pulligny, the Leclerc du Vivier, the Le Claire, Leclaire, Le Clair, Licklär and the modern LeClaire and Greenland-LeClaire — descends from Mengin Le Clerc.

Heritage summary: Mengin Le Clerc (fl. c. 1350) was a probable nobleman of Lorraine whose marriage to Catherine de Girecourt united the Le Clerc family with several established aristocratic houses of the region. Their descendants formed part of the later Le Clerc de Pulligny lineage, preserving a connection to the noble society of medieval Lorraine that would endure for centuries. Through this union, the family became linked to the houses of Girecourt, Pulligny, and Paroye, placing the earliest documented Le Clercs firmly within the hereditary nobility of eastern France.

Colin Le Clerc served as échevin — a magistracy of standing within the municipal order of medieval Lorraine, charged with the administration of civic justice and the supervision of public affairs.

His office anchors the family within the governing class of its commune in the generation following Mengin, confirming continuity of standing across the early fifteenth century.

Through Colin the early Le Clerc line was carried forward into the generation that would, with Jehan Leclerc de Pulligny, enter the recognised noble and seigneurial world of Lorraine.

Jehan Leclerc de Pulligney represents the family's formal passage from influential civic society into recognised nobility. A bourgeois of Nancy by 1429, he operated within the legal and administrative world of the Duchy of Lorraine.

He appears in litigation as procurator or legal representative in a dispute involving Guiot Poignant, the marshal of Aspremont, Henri d'Ogéviller, lord of Domrémy and Greux, and the inhabitants of those villages — placing him in the politically charged landscape associated with Jeanne d'Arc.

His ennoblement by Jean II of Lorraine on 3 January 1464 marks one of the defining moments in the family's rise. The seigneurial designation of Pulligny, granted with the patent, would be borne by the principal line of the House for the next three centuries.

Mengin II Le Clerc was one of the great architects of the family's ascent. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Le Clercs were no longer merely a family of local standing — they were involved in civic government, trade and the financial administration of Nancy.

A 1498–1499 register records the second account of receipts and expenses made by the four governors or sworn officers of Nancy, including Mengin II Le Clerc. His position enabled his sons Claude and Thierry to receive renewed noble recognition under Duke Antoine of Lorraine in 1512.

In family terms, he represents the point at which wealth, office and noble ambition converged.

Claude's ennoblement in 1512 confirmed the standing achieved by his father Mengin II and placed the family within the recognised noble society of Lorraine. The arms recorded for the family at this point are: Or, a leopard gules, armed, langued and crowned azure, on a chief azure three bezants or.

His possession of the fief of Pulligny, his house in Nancy decorated with his arms, and his chapel at Saint-Epvre all point to a man of substantial means and public identity.

Claude is the great branching patriarch of the House of Le Clerc. Through him the family enters the seigneurial, court and financial elite of Lorraine simultaneously. His marriage to Catherine de Trèves de Xirocourt linked the Le Clercs to another recently ennobled but powerful Lorraine family with considerable wealth and ducal influence.

His life represents one of the clearest moments when the family's civic, commercial and noble identities became fully joined. His descendants — through the principal line, the Vivier branch and the Pulligny continuation — carried the name into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Claude II's career belongs to the zenith of the Le Clerc de Pulligny family's political and financial influence. As Argentier of the Duke and Treasurer to the company of the Count of Vaudémont, he occupied two of the most sensitive positions in the ducal administration — handling the personal treasury of the sovereign and the finances of one of the senior princes of the House of Lorraine.

The sixteenth century was the great age of religious conflict across western Europe. In France, the Wars of Religion (1562–1598) tore the kingdom apart; in the Empire, the Schmalkaldic and post-Augsburg struggles defined an entire generation. The Duchy of Lorraine, though formally independent, was tightly bound to the Catholic cause through the House of Guise and remained one of the most resolutely Catholic principalities of the region. To convert to Protestantism in such a setting was to risk everything — office, lands, status, and the inherited nobility of one's house.

Claude II made precisely that choice, and paid precisely that price. The confiscation of his nobility and the seizure of his property place his story among the most dramatic religious-political ruptures recorded in the Le Clerc family history.

Claude II represents the height of the Le Clerc de Pulligny family's administrative and financial power, and at the same time the most acute crisis in its history. With him the family stood at the centre of the Lorraine ducal court; through his conversion it briefly lost the very status its forefathers had spent generations acquiring.

His sons Jean and Alexandre — through military service to Venice, artistic distinction, court office and renewed loyalty to the Duke of Lorraine — rebuilt the family's standing and obtained the formal restoration of its hereditary nobility in 1623. The generation of Claude II, Jean and Alexandre therefore forms the great bridge between the medieval Lords of Pulligny and the later documented branches of the Le Clerc family.

Few profiles in the family's history combine such heights of office with so sharp a fall and so complete a recovery. Argentier of Lorraine, creditor of the Dukes, and Protestant Reformation figure — Claude II is one of the most historically significant members of the House of Le Clerc de Pulligny in the sixteenth century.

Alexandre's career exemplifies the seventeenth-century pattern by which talented sons of noble houses combined foreign military or court service with a return to office at home. His simultaneous standing as Knight of Saint Mark and valet de chambre of the Duke of Lorraine placed him within two of the most prestigious household structures of early modern Europe.

Together with Jean, Alexandre rebuilt the family's position after the confiscations suffered during the Reformation. The renewed hereditary nobility of 28 May 1623 is in significant part their work, and through Alexandre and his son Alexandre II the direct line of the House of Le Clerc de Pulligny passes intact into the second half of the seventeenth century and onward to the Leclaire branch.

Alexandre's name is preserved both in the records of the Venetian Order of Saint Mark and in the household books of the Dukes of Lorraine. Family tradition records that the later Le Claire and Leclaire line of Lorraine and Alsace, from which the modern House descends, issued from his branch.

Nicolas Le Clerc (1624–1660) belongs to the generation that carried the family through the most turbulent decades of the seventeenth century — the Thirty Years' War, the French occupations of Lorraine and the long pressure of Louis XIII and Louis XIV on the Duchy.

He stands between his father Alexandre Le Clerc de Pulligny, Knight of Saint Mark, and his son Alexandre II Le Clerc, Minor Lord of Lorraine, by whom the direct ancestral line passes into the eighteenth-century Le Claire family from which the modern House descends.

Nicolas is the quiet generation through whom the direct line continues from the Knights of Saint Mark of 1623 to the Minor Lords of Lorraine of the later seventeenth century.

Alexandre II Le Clerc (1652–1695) is identified in later family records as a minor Lord of Lorraine and an important bridge figure between the historic Le Clerc de Pulligny family and the subsequent Le Claire branches.

His life spans the high reign of Louis XIV and the long French pressure on the Duchy of Lorraine that would culminate in the formal annexation of 1766. By his generation the wider Le Clerc family was beginning the slow social transition out of the great ducal offices held by his great-grandfather Claude II and into the more modest seigneurial and bourgeois standing of the later Lorraine line.

Through Alexandre II the direct ancestral line passes to François 'Pierre' Le Claire (1684–?), in whose generation the family surname is consistently recorded for the first time under the Le Claire form.

Alexandre II is one of the key transitional figures linking the historic Pulligny family to the later Le Claire branch from which the modern House descends.

François 'Pierre' Le Claire (b. 1684) stands at the junction between the old Leclerc de Pulligny family of Lorraine and the later Le Claire family of the eighteenth century. By his generation the family name is consistently registered in parish books under the spelling Le Claire, marking the visible transition from the earlier Le Clerc house into the documented Le Claire line.

He lived during the reign of Louis XIV and the integration of Alsace into the Kingdom of France — the moment in which the family began the long eastward movement that would carry it across the Rhine. Through him the direct line continues to his son Jean Pierre Le Claire and ultimately to the modern Le Claire descendants.

François 'Pierre' is the first fully documented Le Claire generation in the direct line — the bridge between the Pulligny noble house of Lorraine and the eighteenth-century Le Claire family.

Jean Pierre Leclaire's generation represents the consolidation of the family's position within the educated and influential classes of Lorraine and Alsace.

That his son entered the officer corps suggests the family possessed sufficient wealth, education and social standing to secure opportunities unavailable to ordinary citizens — a position reinforced by the Van der Vyvere alliance and its accompanying dowry.

Through Jean Pierre the family maintained the status and resources necessary to continue its upward trajectory into the late eighteenth century. The Van der Vyvere connection stands as one of the strongest indicators of wealth within the documented family history.

From his household emerged the senior officer Théodore François Joseph Leclaire, Chevalier of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis — the most decorated member of the documented French line — and his brother Louis Jean Baptiste Leclaire, through whom the bloodline of the present House continues.

By the late eighteenth century, the children of Jean Pierre Le Claire and Jacqueline Van der Vyvere included a future Général de Division of France, multiple descendants of substantial standing in Alsace and Lorraine, and the branch from which the modern LeClaire family descends. Few generations in the family's history proved as influential as theirs.

Whilst his elder brother Théodore pursued distinction in military service, 'Louis Benjamin' Jean Baptiste Alexis Leclaire carried forward the direct family line. Through Louis, the LeClaire family continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, eventually leading to the modern descendants of the house.

Born at Termonde (Dendermonde) in Oost-Vlaanderen on 24 June 1754 and dying at Paris on 29 July 1825, his life spans an extraordinary arc of European history — the Ancien Régime of his birth, the Revolution of his middle years, the First Empire, and the Bourbon Restoration in which he died. By his generation the family name is most often recorded in its single-word French form, Leclaire. Family records preserve him under his everyday name 'Louis Benjamin', with the full baptismal style Jean Baptiste Alexis Leclaire.

Louis is the direct ancestor of the modern line: from him the descent runs Johann Baptiste Le Clair, Gottfried Leclair, Julius Leclair, Bernhardine Licklär, Monika Ute Licklär, Andrea Michaela Tai-Noble, and Brandon Noble LeClaire. His elder brother Théodore François Joseph Leclaire, Général de division, founded a parallel — and now collateral — military branch.

The direct line preserves a recurring Jean Baptiste naming tradition — Jean Pierre Le Claire → 'Louis Benjamin' Jean Baptiste Alexis Leclaire → Johann Baptiste Le Clair — reflecting the family's French Catholic heritage and providing an additional genealogical link connecting successive generations.

Johann Baptiste Le Clair, born in 1796, was raised in the German-speaking territories of the Rhine. With his generation parish registers begin to record the family name in its Germanised forms — Le Clair, Leclair, and ultimately Licklär.

Gottfried Leclair (1842–1915) lived through the unification of Germany under Bismarck, the founding of the German Empire, and died on the eve of the Great War. By his generation the family was wholly integrated into German civic life — though the French origin of the name remained visible in every parish register.

Julius Leclair (1880–1961) carried the family through the upheavals of the early twentieth century — the Wilhelmine Empire, the Great War, the Weimar Republic, the Second World War and the post-war reconstruction of Germany.

Through his marriage to Elisabeth Fitze (1882–1924) the line continues to their daughter Bernhardine Licklär, in whose generation the family surname was registered in its fully Germanised form.

Bernhardine Licklär (1920–1978) represents the generation in which the family surname had been transcribed phonetically into Licklär by Rhineland civil registrars — a quiet, generational erasure of the family's documented French origins.

She had one daughter, Monika Ute Licklär, by Jan Jagt — to whom she was not married. Through Monika the bloodline passes into the contemporary generation in which the French ancestral form of the surname has been formally restored.

Monika Ute Licklär, born in 1944 in the closing year of the Second World War, carried the family across the post-war reconstruction of Europe. She is the grandmother of Brandon Noble LeClaire, in whom the French form of the family name has been formally restored.

Andrea Michaela Tai-Noble, born in 1966, is a daughter of the House of LeClaire by direct descent through the Licklär branch. She is the mother of Brandon Noble LeClaire and the immediate predecessor in the line through which the family name was restored to its French form.

Through her, the maternal bloodline of the House passes from the German-speaking Licklär generations to the modern restoration of the ancestral French surname LeClaire in her son Brandon.

Her documented lineage descends from Jean Pierre Le Claire (1718–1793) and Jacqueline Van der Vyvere (1726–1789) through their younger son Louis Jean Baptiste Leclaire (1753–1825), then Johann Baptiste Le Clair, Gottfried Leclair (1842–1915), Julius Leclair (1880–1961) and Elisabeth Fitze (1882–1924), Bernhardine Licklär (1920–1978) and Monika Ute Licklär (b. 1944). The military branch of Général Théodore François Joseph Leclaire (1752–1811), brother of Louis, is a collateral line — distinguished, but not the line of descent of the present House.

The most recent documented descendant of the Leclaire line presently researching and reconstructing the family history. Through extensive analysis of genealogical records, military archives, heraldic evidence and historical sources, he has rebuilt a pedigree spanning more than seven centuries.

His research has connected the Leclaire, Greenland, Van der Vyvere, Molyneux and associated families into a single documented lineage, and has formally restored the French ancestral surname LeClaire to the present generation.

Brandon stands as the present custodian of the House — the modern figure in whom the documented continuity from the medieval Le Clerc, through the Sieurs de Pulligny and the Chevalier of Saint-Louis, to the contemporary line is consciously held and preserved.

By his marriage to Abigail Jane Greenland he founded the House of Greenland-LeClaire, the modern continuation of the line.

Acts as the modern custodian of the family's history, preserving and expanding knowledge of the lineage for future generations.

Author of the present archive — the definitive digital record of the House of LeClaire and the House of Greenland-LeClaire.