Rebecca Rawson was born into privilege in Boston on May 23, 1656, the ninth of twelve children of Edward and Rachel (née Perne) Rawson. Through her mother’s family she was related to the Hooker and Hawley families of New England. Described by her family as “one of the most beautiful, polite, and accomplished young ladies in Boston,” in July 1679 Rebecca married Lord Thomas Haile, the nephew of the lord chief justice of England. With her large dowry in tow, the newlyweds set sail from Boston for England, where their new, gilded life was to begin. After the ship docked in London, Thomas mysteriously disappeared. It soon became apparent that all of Rebecca’s money and possessions had also vanished. It turned out that Thomas Haile was really Thomas Rumsey. He was not an English lord, but an already-married charlatan who abandoned his young wife in a strange land, never to be seen by her again. Rebecca, left penniless and pregnant, raised her child alone for 13 years in England, working as an artist to support herself. On June 7, 1692, on her way back to Boston, she was killed at the age of 36 when her ship made a stop-over at Port Royal, Jamaica. The city, built on sand, slipped into the sea when a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the island. Rebecca was the heroine of John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1849 book, Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1678-79. Called the Freake Painter because he painted members of the Freake family, the artist remains a mystery. His work is exceptionally rare; this is one of only ten known portraits, all of which depict prominent Bostonians. NEHGS owns two of these portraits: Rebecca (who was only 14 when this portrait was painted) and her father, Edward Rawson. Comparisons have been made between Rebecca's story and Shakespseare's The Tempest.