 His family has long recorded ancestry in the farming village of Belp, going back to the early 16th century and before that in the neighboring hamlet of Niederhäusern, near the village of Zimmerwald, both in Canton Bern, Switzerland going back even further, to the late 14th century and beyond.The family were adherents to the Evangelical Reformed National Church of Canton Bern (Evangelisch-Reformierte Landeskirche des Kantons Bern) since 1528, when Bern introduced the Protestant Reformation to all its territories, a faith Guggisberg's emigrant grandfather continued to follow throughout his lifetime while in Canada.Guggisberg himself, because of his mother, was baptized and raised in the Anglican denomination, a faith that he piously adhered to until his death.