Modern
Gottfried Leclair
⚭Maria E. Maßmann
1842, 1915
A nineteenth-century representative of the Leclair spelling within the family's period of German-speaking assimilation.
The Name Through History
A single continuous line, recorded under many forms as it passed through Lorraine, France, the Rhineland and Britain.
Von Mengen
before 1310
Lords of Dalheim — Rhenish-Lorrain ministerial nobility
Moingins dis li clers
c. 1310 – 1400
Lorrain vernacular byname, 1355 charter
Le Clerc · Leclerc
15th – 17th c.
French-Lorraine seigneurial line
Le Claire
late 17th – 18th c.
Transitional French spelling of the direct line
Leclaire
18th – 19th c.
Napoleonic-era French form
Le Clair · Leclair
19th c.
Rhineland branch, German civil registers
Licklär
1880 – 1970
Germanised orthography, 20th-century Rhineland
LeClaire
21st c.
Restored British form, House of Greenland-LeClaire
Family connection
Spouse. Maria E. Maßmann (1845, 1915).
Position in the Direct Line
Generation 14 of 19 in the continuous bloodline shown on the home-page pedigree, from Mengin Le Clerc of Lorraine (c. 1355) to Brandon Noble LeClaire.
Generation 14·Leclair
Gottfried Leclair
1842
Historical context
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.
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.
Related families
Elsewhere 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.
- Archives Nationales (France) ↗
French National Archives, sovereign and noble records of the Ancien Régime and after.
- Geneanet ↗
Genealogy platform; use only entries that themselves cite primary records.
- Wikimedia Commons ↗
Open-licensed historical images, maps and document scans.
- BnF, Armorial général de France (d'Hozier) ↗
Charles d'Hozier's Armorial général de France (1696), digitised by the BnF.
- Wikimedia Commons, Heraldry of France ↗
Open-licensed reproductions of French armorial bearings.
Canonical URL: https://leclaire.co.uk/people/gottfried-leclair