Lotie Irenus Minard (1837-1913)

Portrait from the History of the City of Nashua, New Hampshire, 1897.

   Snappily dressed and sporting a fine example of a 19th-century mustache, three-term New Hampshire state legislator Lotie Irenus Minard was a lifelong resident of Nashua, being born in that city on April 7, 1857, the son of Charles F. and Sarah (Gay) Minard. He would attend the public schools of Nashua and the Crosby Academy and as a young man went into railroad work, which he would follow for four years.

  In the late 1870s Minard entered into the shoe-making trade, and after several years of private work joined the manufacturing firm of Moody, Estabrook, and Anderson in Nashua. Minard would be employed there for seven years and in the mid-1890s was involved in the concrete business in his native city. On October 1, 1884, Lotie Minard married in Nashua to Josephine Hebert (1858-1934), to whom he was wed for nearly thirty years. The couple would remain childless.

  Remarked as having a keen interest in the political life of Nashua, Lotie I. Minard's first run at public office came in 1884 when he was elected to represent Ward 6 on Nashua's Common Council. In 1885 and 1886 he sat on the Nashua Board of Aldermen and in 1890 was elected to his first term in the state legislature, serving in the session of 1891-92. Minard would be returned to the legislature in November 1896, garnering 316 votes on election day. During the 1897-99 session, he would serve on the committee on the Revision of Statutes and won his third term in the house in November 1898.

From the Souvenir of New Hampshire Legislators, 1897.

   After his third term in 1901, Minard returned to his business interests in Nashua, serving as the treasurer of the Nashua Concrete Co. He returned to political life in 1908 when he began service as a Hillsborough County Commissioner, serving in that post for an indeterminate length of time. Minard died in Nashua on February 24, 1913, at age 63. He was survived by his wife Josephine, who, following her death in 1934, was interred alongside her husband at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Nashua.

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.