Ancien Régime
Nicolas Le Clerc
c. 1665 – after 1705
Lorraine
Transitional generation linking the historic Le Clerc de Pulligny family to the later Leclaire branch — bridging the noble and administrative circles of seventeenth-century Lorraine with the documented eighteenth-century Leclaire lineage.
Nicolas Le Clerc belongs to the period in which the family moved out of the noble and administrative circles of Lorraine, in which his Pulligny forebears had served the Dukes, and into the more modest but stable bourgeois milieu from which the eighteenth-century Leclaire family would emerge.
He is positioned between the seventeenth-century Pulligny household (Laurent and his unrecorded son) and Pierre-Nicolas Le Clerc (1692–1762), the earliest clearly documented member of the later branch. By his generation the surname is still written Le Clerc in parish hands, but the modern phonetic spelling Leclaire is already beginning to appear sporadically alongside it.
His lifetime spans the high reign of Louis XIV, the wars of the Spanish Succession and the slow integration of Lorraine into the French orbit that would culminate in the Duchy's annexation in 1766.
Biographical Record
Parents+
Son of an unrecorded Le Clerc (c. 1630 – 1700); grandson of Laurent Le Clerc de Pulligny (1595–1691).
Children+
Father of Pierre-Nicolas Le Clerc (1692–1762).
Family Significance+
Nicolas represents the quiet generation in which the family is reconstituted at a more modest social level after the upheavals of the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War and the loss of the Pulligny patrimony — and from which the documented eighteenth-century Leclaire branch emerges.
Story Mode
Their chapter in the dynastyNicolas Le Clerc belongs to the Ancien Régime. Born around 1665 in Lorraine, the line continued through their hand.
The ancien régime shaped every aspect of Nicolas's world — its laws of inheritance, its wars, its faith and its limits.
Nicolas represents the quiet generation in which the family is reconstituted at a more modest social level after the upheavals of the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War and the loss of the Pulligny patrimony — and from which the documented eighteenth-century Leclaire branch emerges.
In France, Louis XIV the Sun King ruled. Lorraine answered to Charles IV.
Through Nicolas, the House continued — its name, its arms and its memory carried forward to every generation that followed, down to Brandon Noble LeClaire.
The World They Lived In
Nicolas's lifetime · 1665–1705
Who governed their world
- King of FranceLouis XIV the Sun King
- Duke of LorraineCharles IV
- Holy Roman EmperorLeopold I
Contemporary figures
- Pierre CorneilleDramatist · 1606–1684
- Antonie van LeeuwenhoekMicroscopist · 1632–1723
- J. S. BachComposer · 1685–1750
- VoltairePhilosophe · 1694–1778
Major events during their life
- Revocation of the Edict of Nantes1685 · France
Dynasty Explorer
See the family network
Legacy Flow
Trace what they passed on
How Did I Get Here?
Path from Nicolas to Brandon