The heritage about family’s past history progresses similarly to that of the established history. Both are created in a certain context and from a certain standpoint. Family heritage is formed through narrative history on the personal level, mediated by people’s and their contemporaries’ recollections. Seppo Knuuttila (1994: 23) argues that a problem here lies in the fact that people tend to alter the past in their stories, thereby creating a new reality. The current article deals with written narratives (see Apo 1995: 176) where recollections are somewhat more systematised than in oral narratives. It appears that in written form the respondent is more likely to follow the categories of official as well as unofficial history, which both create certain frameworks and models for the narration. The oral history is primarily defined as unofficial history. When presented in writing, however, oral history offers new interpretations of official history. History has been considered as the memory of society. The provided research material, however, suggests that in this case the memory must be selective. Personal memories and experience, different opinions on the same periods of time, events and people provide a versatile material for unraveling the past.