• 84 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

American History Writing Prompts

A diary entry, a letter home or an eyewitness report from inside a dated event, Jamestown to the Moon landing.

American History Writing Prompts

Show all 84
  1. Write the diary entry of the helper who rules the lines on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence.Fact: on July 19, 1776, Congress ordered it engrossed, written in a large, clear hand, on parchment.
  2. Write the diary entry of a twelve-year-old who walks the mule that pulls a canal boat.Fact: on a towpath one mule can draw a barge of 60,000 pounds. The Erie Canal opened in 1825.
  3. Write how the news of the railroad is told in a village whose land the tracks will cross.Fact: the railroads of the 1860s cut across the ancestral lands of American Indians.

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All 84 prompts

First settlements 15

  • A carpenter writes home to England about the fort he has just helped finish at Jamestown. Fact: by June 15, 1607, the fort was done: a triangle with a bulwark at each corner.
  • A Mayflower passenger writes home to explain why the ship is nowhere near where it meant to land. Fact: in 1620 the ship was bound for the Colony of Virginia; winter seas forced it back to Cape Cod.
  • A woman newly landed in Virginia writes to her sister about her first week ashore. Fact: in 1619 the Virginia Company shipped about 90 women to Virginia to start families.
  • Give an eyewitness report of the day Jamestown was abandoned, and of the news that turned the boats around. Fact: in 1610 the settlers left and were back within a day, met by news of an incoming fleet.
  • Give an eyewitness report of the signing of the Mayflower Compact, by someone too young to sign it. Fact: 41 passengers signed it aboard ship in November 1620, at anchor off Cape Cod.
  • Keep a carpenter's diary of the first winter at Plymouth, one house at a time. Fact: in the winter of 1620 to 1621 just seven homes and four common houses went up.
  • Keep the diary of a clerk who takes notes at the first assembly in Jamestown. Fact: on July 30, 1619, the governor called the first representative legislative assembly.
  • The night before three ships sail for Virginia, a sailor writes to his mother. Fact: the voyage that founded Jamestown began on December 6, 1606, on three ships.
  • Report the building of the Jamestown fort as a Powhatan hunter sees it from the tree line. Fact: in 1607 the fort went up on land where the Powhatan people hunted.
  • Report the day the Mayflower's sister ship was left behind in England. Fact: the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, so in 1620 the Mayflower crossed the Atlantic alone.
  • Write a child's diary entry from below decks on the Mayflower during a storm. Fact: in 1620 its 102 passengers shared a space about 20 by 80 feet, the ceiling about five feet high.
  • Write the diary entry for the morning someone on the Mayflower first shouts that there is land. Fact: the crew sighted Cape Cod in November 1620, after about ten weeks at sea.
  • Write the diary entry of a ship's boy on the day the settlers choose the spot for Jamestown. Fact: on May 13, 1607, 104 English men and boys picked the site of Jamestown, Virginia.
  • Write the last diary entry of a Jamestown innkeeper in the year the capital moves away. Fact: in 1699 the government left Jamestown for Middle Plantation, renamed Williamsburg.
  • Write the letter a Jamestown settler never got to send, asking home for food in the hungry winter. Fact: the winter of 1609 to 1610 at Jamestown is known as the Starving Time.

The Revolution and the founding papers 17

  • A Boston shopkeeper writes to a cousin in London the morning after the tea went into the harbor. Fact: the British government called the protest of December 16, 1773, an act of treason.
  • A printer's apprentice writes home about the night the Declaration of Independence came to the shop. Fact: the first printed copies were sent out on the morning of July 5, 1776.
  • A rider carrying a handwritten copy of the Bill of Rights to a state capital keeps a diary of the road. Fact: in 1789 clerks made 14 handwritten copies of the proposed amendments, and copies went to the states.
  • A soldier writes home the week he hears the war with Britain is over. Fact: the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolution.
  • Give an eyewitness report from the bridge at Concord, written that evening by someone who stayed back. Fact: about 400 militiamen met 100 Regulars at the North Bridge near 11 a.m. on April 19, 1775.
  • Keep the diary of a doorkeeper who stands outside the room while Congress argues over independence. Fact: Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on the afternoon of July 4, 1776.
  • Keep the diary of an innkeeper near the State House in the summer the Constitution is drafted in secret. Fact: all through the summer of 1787 the delegates met in closed sessions in Philadelphia.
  • Report the Boston Tea Party as someone watching from the wharf with cold feet. Fact: on December 16, 1773, 340 or 342 chests of tea went into Boston Harbor in about three hours.
  • Report the day the Constitution was signed, and the three men who would not put their names to it. Fact: on September 17, 1787, 39 of the 42 men present signed; three refused for lack of a bill of rights.
  • Report the signing of the Declaration of Independence as a messenger waiting by the door. Fact: delegates began signing on August 2, 1776; 56 signed in the end, by state from north to south.
  • Report the vote for independence the way a clerk would, colony by colony. Fact: on July 2, 1776, twelve colonies voted yes; New York cast no vote until July 9.
  • Write a farm child's diary entry for the morning the first shots are fired at Lexington. Fact: the first shots rang out at Lexington at sunrise on April 19, 1775.
  • Write a letter to a newspaper of 1789 arguing that the new Constitution needs a list of rights. Fact: Congress proposed 12 amendments on September 25, 1789; ten were ratified on December 15, 1791.
  • Write the diary entry of a sailor on one of the tea ships, the night his cargo goes overboard. Fact: the tea dumped at Boston on December 16, 1773, came off three ships.
  • Write the diary entry of the helper who rules the lines on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence. Fact: on July 19, 1776, Congress ordered it engrossed, written in a large, clear hand, on parchment.
  • Write the letter of someone who has just heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud in the town square. Year: 1776. Angle: one phrase you understood at once, and one you had to ask about.
  • Write the letter of the clerk who copied out the Constitution by hand, the night before it is signed. Fact: in 1787 a clerk copied it in a fine, clear hand in about 40 hours and was paid $30.

Moving west 20

  • A child on the Oregon Trail writes to a friend back home about the animals that pull the wagon. Fact: Oregon Trail pioneers of the 1840s used three kinds of animal: oxen, mules and horses.
  • A forty-niner who has found no gold writes home without admitting it. Fact: 1849 was the peak year of the gold rush, which is where the name forty-niner comes from.
  • A New Orleans shopkeeper writes to a brother in France the week the city changes countries. Fact: the Louisiana Purchase, signed April 30, 1803: 828,000 square miles for $15 million.
  • A Pony Express rider writes a letter of his own at the end of his first run. Fact: the first westbound trip left St. Joseph on April 3, 1860, and reached Sacramento 10 days later.
  • A track layer on the Central Pacific railroad writes home to his village in China. Fact: from 1863 over 10,000 Chinese laborers built the Central Pacific line east from Sacramento.
  • Keep the diary of a gold seeker going to California the long way round, by sea. Fact: in 1849 a sailing voyage from the East Coast around South America took four to five months.
  • Keep the diary of a survey party's cook on the day the party reaches Yellowstone. Fact: Yellowstone became the first national park by an act signed into law on March 1, 1872.
  • Report the day the news of gold reached a small eastern town and people started packing. Fact: gold was found in California on January 24, 1848; an East Coast paper reported it that August.
  • Report the day the two railroads met, as a telegraph operator waiting to send the news. Fact: the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was driven at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.
  • Report the opening of the Erie Canal from a seat on the bank. Fact: finished on October 26, 1825; a line of boats then sailed from Buffalo to New York City in ten days.
  • Write a diary entry from the top of South Pass on the Oregon Trail. Fact: in 1843 the wagons crossed the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, a valley 12 miles wide.
  • Write a homesteader's letter home at the end of the first of five years on the claim. Fact: the Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres to a settler who lived on the land for five years.
  • Write a letter to a newspaper of 1867, for or against buying Alaska. Fact: on March 30, 1867, the United States agreed to pay Russia $7.2 million, under 2 cents an acre.
  • Write how the news of the railroad is told in a village whose land the tracks will cross. Fact: the railroads of the 1860s cut across the ancestral lands of American Indians.
  • Write the diary entry for the night before your family's wagon leaves Independence, Missouri. Fact: in spring 1843 a wagon train of nearly 1,000 people gathered there, bound for Oregon.
  • Write the diary entry of a San Francisco shopkeeper in the month the town fills with strangers. Fact: gold took San Francisco from about 1,000 people in 1848 to 25,000 by 1850.
  • Write the diary entry of a twelve-year-old who walks the mule that pulls a canal boat. Fact: on a towpath one mule can draw a barge of 60,000 pounds. The Erie Canal opened in 1825.
  • Write the first journal entry of the youngest boatman on the expedition sent to cross the continent. Fact: the Corps of Discovery left Camp Dubois on May 14, 1804, bound up the Missouri River.
  • Write the note a traveler leaves at a fort on the Oregon Trail for the family coming next year. Fact: the trail of the 1840s ran about 2,170 miles from the Missouri River to the valleys of Oregon.
  • Write the packing list for an expedition to the Pacific as a letter to the storekeeper. Fact: the expedition funded in 1803 ran out of salt but never ran out of ink and paper.

The Civil War years 15

  • A free Black volunteer writes home the week the army at last lets him enlist. Fact: General Order 143 created the United States Colored Troops on May 22, 1863.
  • A mother writes to the War Department to ask where her son's regiment is. Year: 1864. Angle: polite on the first page, less polite on the second.
  • A new Civil War recruit writes home from camp before he has seen any fighting. Year: 1861. Angle: what he packed, what he was issued, and the one thing he will not say.
  • A sister writes to her brother in one army about their other brother in the other. Fact: the border states stayed in the Union through the Civil War. Angle: the family lives in one.
  • A soldier of the surrendered army writes in his diary the night he gets his parole paper. Fact: on April 12, 1865, the infantry gave up their arms, folded their battle flags and got papers home.
  • A soldier walking home in the spring of 1865 writes one last letter, addressed to himself. Fact: the terms at Appomattox let the men go home if they pledged to end the fighting.
  • A wounded soldier cannot hold the pen, so a nurse writes his letter home for him. Year: 1863. Angle: she writes what he says, and adds one line of her own at the end.
  • Give an eyewitness report from outside the house at Appomattox, by a soldier holding the horses. Fact: on April 9, 1865, the two generals met in the parlor of a house there to discuss surrender.
  • Keep a farm wife's diary of a harvest brought in while the men are away at war. Year: 1862. Angle: what gets done, what is left standing in the field, and who turns up to help.
  • Report a speech that was over in under two minutes, as someone standing too far back to hear it all. Fact: the Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863: 271 words, read to about 15,000 people.
  • Report the 34 hours at Fort Sumter as a telegraph clerk piecing it together from messages. Fact: after 34 hours of fighting the fort was surrendered at 2:30 p.m. on April 13, 1861.
  • Report the day emancipation was announced in Galveston, Texas. Fact: June 19, 1865, the day the Emancipation Proclamation was ordered enforced in Texas; now Juneteenth.
  • Report the vote on the 13th Amendment from the gallery of the House. Fact: the House passed it 119 to 56 in January 1865, and it was ratified on December 6, 1865.
  • Write the diary entry of a Charleston baker woken by the guns before dawn. Fact: the Civil War began at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861.
  • Write the diary entry of someone in a crowd waiting at the telegraph office on New Year's Day. Fact: the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863.

The twentieth century 17

  • A factory worker writes to her husband overseas about the war job she has taken on. Year: 1943. Angle: what she builds, what she earns, and what she does not plan to give back.
  • A first-time voter of sixty writes to her granddaughter the night she registers. Fact: the Voting Rights Act, signed on August 6, 1965, outlawed literacy tests for voters.
  • A grandfather writes to his grandson about a new law that promises him a pension. Fact: the Social Security Act of August 14, 1935, set up a system of old-age benefits for workers.
  • A mill worker of eleven writes to a newspaper about her working day. Fact: the 1900 census found about 2 million children at work in mills, mines, fields and factories.
  • A new Peace Corps volunteer writes home from a village a long way from it. Fact: an executive order established the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961.
  • A returning soldier writes home from his first week at college. Fact: the G.I. Bill, signed on June 22, 1944, gave veterans funds for a college education.
  • Keep the diary of a family's first long drive on a brand-new interstate highway. Fact: the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established the interstate highway system.
  • Keep the diary of a woman on the day she votes for the first time. Fact: the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to agree.
  • Report a dust storm as a child who watches it come across the plains. Fact: April 14, 1935, called Black Sunday, started out clear and warm before the dust arrived.
  • Report the day the war in Europe ended, from a street where everyone has come outside. Fact: Germany's surrender was signed at Reims, France, in the early hours of May 7, 1945.
  • Report the first airplane flight as someone standing on the sand with a hat held on. Fact: December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in a wind of more than 20 miles an hour.
  • Report the first day a town's lunch counter serves everyone, as the person behind the counter. Fact: the Civil Rights Act of July 2, 1964, outlawed segregation in restaurants, theaters and hotels.
  • Report the March on Washington as someone near the back of the crowd. Fact: on August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people marched the mile-long National Mall.
  • Report the signing that ended the war in the Pacific, as a sailor watching from the deck. Fact: September 2, 1945, on a ship in Tokyo Bay; the time was recorded as four minutes past nine.
  • Write the diary entry of a child allowed to stay up late for the Moon landing. Fact: July 20, 1969; about 600 million people watched the moonwalk live.
  • Write the diary entry of a twelve-year-old on the day her ship reaches the immigration station in New York Harbor. Fact: the new station on Ellis Island opened on December 17, 1900, and processed 2,251 people that day.
  • Write the diary entry of someone who listens to the radio on the afternoon of December 8, 1941. Fact: the day after Pearl Harbor the president spoke at 12:30 p.m. to Congress and, by radio, the nation.

How it works

These American history writing prompts put the writer inside a dated event as an ordinary, made-up person: a ship's boy, a printer's apprentice, a telegraph clerk. No real person is named, and nobody is asked to write as one.

Read the full guide

From a Boston Tea Party writing prompt to the Bill of Rights

The second group covers 1773 to 1791, from a Boston Tea Party writing prompt set on the wharf to a bill of rights writing prompt carried on horseback. Between them in time are the constitution writing prompts: an innkeeper in the secret summer of 1787, and the clerk who copied the whole text by hand.

Oregon Trail writing prompts and Civil War writing prompts

The Oregon Trail writing prompts begin the night before the wagons leave Independence and reach the top of South Pass. The Civil War writing prompts keep to the edges of the fighting: a baker woken by the guns, a nurse, a clerk at the telegraph.

  • Put the date at the top of a diary entry. It decides what your writer cannot know yet.
  • A letter home leaves things out. Decide what your writer will not tell the family.

Questions and answers

Is there a Jamestown writing prompt?

Nine. In one a carpenter writes home about the three-sided fort, finished by June 15, 1607. In another a clerk keeps a diary of the first assembly, called on July 30, 1619.

Are there Mayflower writing prompts?

Six, from 1620 and the winter after: a child's diary from below decks, the morning land is sighted, and the signing of the Mayflower Compact as told by someone too young to sign it.

What is a good Declaration of Independence writing prompt?

One written from beside it. Be the printer's apprentice on the night the text reaches the shop, or a messenger waiting by the door on August 2, 1776, while the delegates sign.

Are there gold rush writing prompts?

Four. News of gold reaches a town back east, a forty-niner writes home with nothing to show, a gold seeker keeps a diary of the voyage around South America, and a San Francisco shopkeeper watches the town fill.

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