LECLAIRE
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How Did I Get Here?

From Mengin to Brandon

16 generations of the documented bloodline.

  1. 1

    Continuation of the Pulligny line — an important bridge between the early civic family and the later noble branches.

  2. 2

    Valet de Chambre to Duke Antoine of Lorraine

    A major patriarch of the House of Le Clerc. Merchant of silk and wool cloth, valet de chambre to Duke Antoine, Conseiller and Auditeur at the Chamber of Accounts under Charles III, and seigneur of multiple lordships in Lorraine.

  3. 3

    Argentier of the Duke of Lorraine

    Argentier to the Duke of Lorraine and Treasurer to the Count of Vaudémont's company — the height of the Le Clerc de Pulligny family's political and financial influence — whose conversion to Protestantism brought the confiscation of the family's nobility and lands, and one of the defining crises in the history of the House.

  4. 4

    Knight of the Order of Saint Mark (Republic of Venice)

    Born in Nancy, son of Claude II Le Clerc de Pulligny and Claudon Mengin de Pulligny. Served Charlotte Catherine de La Trémoille, Princess of Taranto and wife of Henri de Bourbon-Condé. Later a Knight of Saint Mark and, together with his brother Jean, restored to hereditary nobility on 28 May 1623. Alexandre represents the most likely continuation of the direct ancestral line following Claude II.

  5. 5
    Nicolas Le Clerc16241660

    Son of Alexandre Le Clerc de Pulligny and father of Alexandre II Le Clerc; the generation through which the direct ancestral line is carried across the mid-seventeenth century in Lorraine.

  6. 6

    Minor Lord of Lorraine

    Minor Lord of Lorraine and key transitional figure linking the historic Le Clerc de Pulligny family to the subsequent Le Claire branches from which the modern House descends.

  7. 7

    First generation to bear the Le Claire form of the family name. Son of Alexandre II Le Clerc and direct ancestor of the eighteenth-century Le Claire line.

  8. 8

    A principal figure in the documented LeClaire line. Father of the senior French officer Théodore François Joseph Leclaire and husband of an heiress of the Van der Vyvere.

  9. 9

    Younger son of Jean Pierre Le Claire and Jacqueline Van der Vyvere; younger brother of Général Théodore François Joseph Leclaire. Through Louis the direct bloodline of the modern House descends into the Rhineland.

  10. 10

    A generation showing the family name in the Le Clair form, reflecting linguistic and administrative variation.

  11. 11
    Gottfried Leclair18421915

    A nineteenth-century representative of the Leclair spelling within the family's period of German-speaking assimilation.

  12. 12
    Julius Leclair18801961

    Son of Gottfried Leclair and Maria E. Maßmann; husband of Elisabeth Fitze and father of Bernhardine Licklär, through whom the bloodline continues into the modern German-speaking generation.

  13. 13

    Daughter of Julius Leclair and Elisabeth Fitze; her surname records the fully Germanised form of the family name. Mother of Monika Ute Licklär by Jan Jagt; the two were not married.

  14. 14

    Continuation of the Germanised branch of the LeClaire line; mother of the modern restoration.

  15. 15

    A daughter of the House of LeClaire; the continuation of the bloodline through the Licklär branch, and mother of Brandon Noble LeClaire. Her documented descent runs from Jean Pierre Le Claire and Jacqueline Van der Vyvere through their younger son Louis Jean Baptiste Leclaire — brother of Général Théodore François Joseph Leclaire — and the successive Le Clair, Leclair and Licklär generations of the Rhineland.

  16. 16

    Head of the House of LeClaire

    Modern representative and present head of the House of LeClaire — one of the historic noble and moneyed houses of the Duchy of Lorraine — and, by his 22 May 2027 marriage to Abigail Jane Greenland, founder of the House of Greenland-LeClaire. He has formally restored the ancestral surname LeClaire to continue an eight-hundred-year documented lineage that includes the Sieurs de Pulligny, Auditors of the Chamber of Accounts of Nancy, advancers of capital to the Dukes of Lorraine, and his fifth-great-granduncle Général de Division Théodore François Joseph Leclaire, Commander of the Legion of Honour.