The French ancestors are Pierre Bérard and his wife Isabelle Guillermain or Villermain, who lived in the parish of St-Martin in Château-du-Loir, near Tours (the photo above is the town hall). Pierre worked as a master tailor, making women's clothing and training apprentices and journeymen. Their son Gabriel (born October 9, 1644) had emigrated to Québec by 1671, where he married Geneviève Hayot (died 1727) in October 1673 at Neuville, in 1712. He died between 1705 and 1710, and Geneviève married Jean Turcot in 1712.

Gabriel and Geneviève Bérard dit Lépine had eleven children: Louise (1674, married François Plante); Marie-Élisabeth (1679-1680); Gabriel (1681, married Marie-Angélique Desorcy); Geneviève (1683, married Jean Tapin); Pierre-Louis (1685, married Jeanne Déry); Catherine (1686?); Marie-Angélique (1690); another Pierre (1693, married Catherine Joly); Jean-François (1696, married his brother's stepdaughter Marie-Thérèse Renaud ); François (1696); and Marie-Françoise (1704-1710), all born either at Sorel or Neuville.

Pierre-Louis Bérard was born on August 6, 1685 at Soel, and married Jeanne Déry on July 27, 1717 at Charlesbourg. Their daughter Marie-Angélique (born June, 1717!) married Jacques-Jean Valois in 1750; their daughter, yet another Marie-Angélique, was a great-grandmother of Joseph Arthur Martin.