Ancien Régime
Pierre-Nicolas Le Clerc
1692 – 1762
Lorraine
One of the earliest clearly documented members of the later family branch — the generation that bridges the historic Le Clerc de Pulligny lineage and the emergence of the Leclaire surname in eighteenth-century records.
Pierre-Nicolas Le Clerc (1692–1762) is the earliest figure in the post-Pulligny line for whom dates can be stated with confidence. He lived through the long reign of Louis XV, the loss of the independent Duchy of Lorraine (formally absorbed into France in 1766, four years after his death) and the consolidation of the family in the borderland between Lorraine and Alsace.
Timeline note: the family surname undergoes its most visible transition during his and his son's generations. Parish registers and notarial acts of the period record the same household variously as Le Clerc, Leclerc, Le Claire and Leclaire — the spellings drifting through clerical hands towards the single-word Leclaire form by which the next generation is consistently known.
He is the link between Nicolas Le Clerc (c. 1665) and Pierre Leclaire, through whom the line continues to Louis Jean Baptiste Leclaire and ultimately to the modern House.
Biographical Record
Parents+
Son of Nicolas Le Clerc (c. 1665 – after 1705).
Children+
Father of Pierre Leclaire.
Historical Profile+
Surname timeline during this generation: c. 1690 Le Clerc / Leclerc dominant in Lorraine parish hands · c. 1720 Le Claire and Leclaire begin to appear in mixed Alsatian / Lorraine registers · by c. 1750 Leclaire is the form most consistently recorded for the household.
Family Significance+
Pierre-Nicolas is the first generation after the seventeenth-century gap for whom the family's continuity into the documented eighteenth-century Leclaire branch can be plainly traced.
Story Mode
Their chapter in the dynastyPierre-Nicolas Le Clerc belongs to the Ancien Régime. Born around 1692 in Lorraine, the line continued through their hand.
Surname timeline during this generation: c. 1690 Le Clerc / Leclerc dominant in Lorraine parish hands · c. 1720 Le Claire and Leclaire begin to appear in mixed Alsatian / Lorraine registers · by c. 1750 Leclaire is the form most consistently recorded for the household.
Pierre-Nicolas is the first generation after the seventeenth-century gap for whom the family's continuity into the documented eighteenth-century Leclaire branch can be plainly traced.
In France, Louis XIV the Sun King ruled. Lorraine answered to Leopold I. Across the wider world, revocation of the edict of nantes was reshaping events.
Through Pierre-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
Pierre-Nicolas's lifetime · 1692–1762
Who governed their world
- King of FranceLouis XIV the Sun King
- Duke of LorraineLeopold I
- Holy Roman EmperorLeopold I
Contemporary figures
- Antonie van LeeuwenhoekMicroscopist · 1632–1723
- J. S. BachComposer · 1685–1750
- VoltairePhilosophe · 1694–1778
- MozartComposer · 1756–1791
Major events during their life
- Lorraine to Stanislas Leszczyński1737 · Lorraine
Father-in-law of Louis XV; Lorraine becomes effectively French.
Dynasty Explorer
See the family network
Legacy Flow
Trace what they passed on
How Did I Get Here?
Path from Pierre-Nicolas to Brandon