Le Claire

Ancien Régime

Unknown Le Clerc

c. 1630, c. 1700

Unrecorded son of Laurent Le Clerc de Pulligny; the bridge generation between the seventeenth-century Pulligny goldsmith household and the documented Leclaire line of the eighteenth century.

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 Laurent Le Clerc de Pulligny (1595–1691).

Children. Father of Nicolas Le Clerc (c. 1665, after 1705).

Position in the Direct Line

Unknown Le Clerc is a collateral figure of the wider House and is not part of the continuous bloodline shown on the home-page pedigree. Their branch descends from Alexandre II Le Clerc in the direct line.

Historical context

No baptismal or marriage record has yet been recovered for this generation, but the chronology, Laurent (b. 1595) to Nicolas Le Clerc (b. c. 1665), requires an intervening father active in the mid-seventeenth century. He would have lived through the Thirty Years' War in Lorraine, the French occupation under Louis XIV and the slow re-stabilisation of the Duchy.

He is preserved in the pedigree as the link by which the craftsman branch of Laurent continues into the Nicolas / Pierre-Nicolas household, and from there to the Leclaire family proper.

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

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/unknown-le-clerc