Rebecca Rawson (May 23, 1656, Massachusetts - June 7-June 9, 1692, near Port Royal, Jamaica) was the heroine of the 1849 book Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay (by John G. Whittier). Rawson was born in 1656 in Newbury, MA to Edward and Rachel Rawson. Rebecca was the couple's ninth child. Her father went on to become Secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Rawson was considered "one of the most beautiful, polite and accomplished young ladies in Boston." Thomas Hale, she soon discovered, was Thomas Rumsey and he had left London to see his wife in Kent.