Le Claire

Ancien Régime

Arms of the Le Claire line, as carried into the eighteenth century

François 'Pierre' Le Claire

⚭Marie-Anne Du Moine (known locally as “Nanon”)

1684, ?

Lorraine / Alsace frontier

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.

The Name Through History

A single continuous line, recorded under many forms as it passed through Lorraine, France, the Rhineland and Britain.

  1. Von Mengen

    before 1310

    Lords of Dalheim — Rhenish-Lorrain ministerial nobility

  2. Moingins dis li clers

    c. 1310 – 1400

    Lorrain vernacular byname, 1355 charter

  3. Le Clerc · Leclerc

    15th – 17th c.

    French-Lorraine seigneurial line

  4. Le Claire

    late 17th – 18th c.

    Transitional French spelling of the direct line

  5. Leclaire

    18th – 19th c.

    Napoleonic-era French form

  6. Le Clair · Leclair

    19th c.

    Rhineland branch, German civil registers

  7. Licklär

    1880 – 1970

    Germanised orthography, 20th-century Rhineland

  8. LeClaire

    21st c.

    Restored British form, House of Greenland-LeClaire

Family connection

Parents. Son of Alexandre II Le Clerc (1652–1695), Minor Lord of Lorraine.

Spouse. Marie-Anne Du Moine (known locally as “Nanon”).

Married Marie-Anne Du Moine, known locally as “Nanon”, the familiar Lorraine diminutive by which she appears in parish and household records.

Children. Father of Jean Pierre Le Claire (1718–1793), through whom the direct ancestral line continues.

Position in the Direct Line

Generation 10 of 19 in the continuous bloodline shown on the home-page pedigree, from Mengin Le Clerc of Lorraine (c. 1355) to Brandon Noble LeClaire.

  1. Generation 7·Le Clerc

    Alexandre Le Clerc de Pulligny

    1585

  2. Generation 8·Le Clerc

    Nicolas Le Clerc

    1624

  3. Generation 9·Le Clerc

    Alexandre II Le Clerc

    1652

  4. Generation 10·Le Claire

    François 'Pierre' Le Claire

    1684

  5. Generation 11·Le Claire

    Jean Pierre Le Claire, Très Noble Seigneur

    1718

  6. Generation 12·Leclaire

    'Louis Benjamin' Jean Baptiste Alexis Leclaire

    24 June 1754

  7. Generation 13·Le Clair

    Johann Baptiste Le Clair

    1796

Historical context

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.

Significance & legacy

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.

Known records & evidence

Biographical, parish, notarial, seigneurial and military records of Lorraine, Alsace and the Rhineland, preserved in the LeClaire Family Historical Archive.

Related entities

Other documented people, family branches, places and armorial records connected to this entry in the archive.

Sources & references

Authoritative archives, libraries and reference collections that hold — or can be used to verify, records of this entity. External sources are cited only where they genuinely support the historical record; not every claim on this page is yet matched to a digitised primary source.

  • Parish, notarial, seigneurial and military records of Lorraine, Alsace and the Rhineland preserved in the LeClaire Family Historical Archive.

Canonical URL: https://leclaire.co.uk/people/francois-pierre-le-claire