The earliest known ancestor is the father of the immigrant, Jean Parenteau, who lived in Bazauges (now in the department of Charente-Maritime, just east of La Rochelle) and was married to Marguerite Sevestre or Fouestre (most sources give the second spelling). Their son Pierre was born in 1649 or 1650 (six months after arriving in Québec, he gave his age as 17). Pierre came to Canada in the summer of 1666, and for the next six or seven years, worked as a manual laborer, clearing land in what is now Yamaska County for the local seigneur Jean Crevier. In September 1673, in Québec city, he married Madeleine Tisseran (c1650-1705), who was the same age and also an immigrant (she was born in Picardy). They settled in St-François-du-Lac, but Pierre was killed fighting the Iroquois on the frontier in 1690 or 1691. Madeleine then married Jean Charpentier in July 1695.

Pierre and Madeleine had twelve children, five of whom died young. Several daughters married, and have descendants; a son Charles reached adulthood but has no recorded descendants. Therefore all Canadian Parenteaus are descended from the youngest surviving son, Pierre-Louis Parenteau, who was born in January 1690 at St-François-du-Lac. In April 1710 he was granted a large piece of farmland in Yamaska County, and in July 1711 married Marguérite St-Laurent (daughter of Gilles St-Laurent and Anne LaBrecque, born in Sorel in January 1694). The farm may have been called Lafontaine, as Pierre was known as "Parenteau dit Lafontaine." Of their fourteen children, eleven lived to adulthood. Marguérite was born in 1712; Anne-Cathérine in 1713; Geneviève-Josèphe in 1716; Pierre in 1717; Joseph in 1721; Mathurin in 1723; Marie-Agathe in 1725; Jean-Baptiste in 1726; Augustin about 1728; François-Marie (male) in 1731; Angélique in 1732; and Michel in 1735. Pierre died on his Yamaska farm in June 1745. His wife's date of death is unknown.

Joseph Parenteau (1721-p1757) married Marie-Jeanne Hosteau Jolicoeur dit Georgeteau in 1752. Some sources indicate a different mother for the last two: Jeanne Jolicoeur dit Poliquin. But these both must be the same woman, as there is only one marriage date recorded for Joseph in St-François-du-Lac, and the names are similar. If they were two women, they are sisters, because the parents' names are the same for both. Their children:

1. Marie-Josèphe, married 1774 at Yamaska to Michel Petit
2. Joseph, married 1780 at Yamaska to Rose Martin (daughter of Jacques & Anne Joyal, our ancestors through their son Joseph)
3. Agathe, married 1780 at Yamaska to Joseph Dunn ( son of Jean-Baptiste & Agathe Vanasse)
4. Jean-Baptiste, married 1782 at Yamaska to Geneviève-Cécile Dumas
5. Pierre, married 1786 at Yamaska to Anne Martin (also a daughter of Jacques & Anne)
6. Michel, perhaps died young
7. Jean-François-Régis, married January 26, 1795 at Yamaska to Angélique Valois (see below)

François-Régis Parenteau was born in 1766, probably in St-François-du-Lac, and married Marie-Angélique Valois in January 1795 in Yamaska. We know of a son, also called François-Régis, who married Sophie Payant dit Saintonge in 1836 in Yamaska; her mother Françoise Martin was the daughter of Antoine Martin, possibly also from our Martin family but unidentified so far. François-Régis' sister Marguérite Parenteau was born about 1800 and married Joseph Arthur Martin in 1823 at St-Michel d'Yamaska. They were the parents of Maxime Martin (1831-1880), our great-great-grandfather, and of Joseph (1832?-a1922).