Treffle George Levesque (1896-1977)

Treffle G. Levesque, from the Nashua Telegraph, May 5, 1969.

    Anyone (politically inclined or otherwise) with a first name like "Treffle" is worthy of more than just a few descriptive lines, and in the case of Treffle George Levesque ( a two-term New Hampshire state representative), several newspaper archives have yielded a fair amount of information that will make my job of writing about him slightly easier! Unlike 90% of the folks profiled here, Mr. Levesque's unusual name wasn't discovered online but was instead located via the 1967-1968 edition of Who's Who In American Politics, a recent purchase from a local book sale. This work has helped field nearly thirty new oddly named persons, some of which will make their way onto the site here.

  The story of this oddly named New Hampshire native begins with his birth in the city of Nashua on August 3, 1896. The son of Joseph M. and Clara April Levesque, Treffle G. Levesque's education took place in the Nashua school system and following the completion of schooling was employed by the J.F. McElwain Co., a shoe manufacturing business noted as being "the largest employer of labor in New Hampshire." He married his first wife Marie Brodeur in Nashua and would later have four children: J. Gerard, Paul, Estelle, and Elizabeth.

   Both before and after his time in state government Levesque was a member (and past Governor) of the Nashua Moose Lodge and in May 1969 was honored by that organization, receiving the Pilgrim Degree of Merit. Levesque is noted as being "the first Nashuan to gain the honor" and in addition to Moose Lodge activities was a member of the Fraternal Cribbage League, becoming president of that organization in 1967.

   In November 1964 Treffle Levesque won election to the New Hampshire State House of Representatives from Nashua's seventh ward, garnering 1534 votes. He would be reelected in November 1966, serving until the close of the session in January 1969. Widowed in the mid-1950s, Levesque remarried first to Viola Duchesnes, who died in 1965. He remarried again in 1966 to Lena Dubray Doyle, and following her passing in 1972 he remarried to Blanche Berube (1898-1991), who would survive him upon his death, which occurred at a Nashua hospital on March 19, 1977.  A burial location for Levesque is unknown at this time but is presumed to be somewhere in the Nashua vicinity, where he had lived for all of his life.

                    Treffle Levesque (located on the extreme left), from the Nashua Telegraph, Dec. 5, 1975.