Richard Saltonstall Rogers (January 13, 1790 – June 11, 1873) was an early American shipping merchant and was possibly the inspiration for a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Using the influence of his oldest brother, Nathaniel Leverett Rogers, who married the daughter of a prominent businessman in Salem, he acquired large amounts of cargo to be shipped to Russia.

Their company employed the ships the Tybee, Clay, Grotius, Augustus, Quill, and Charles Daggett.

[2][3] Hawthorne, in a letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, promised to "immolate" Rogers, along with several other political opponents, if he were successfully removed from his office.

[citation needed] Through his daughter Elizabeth, he was the grandfather of Sir Dudley Pound, a senior British Admiral during World War II.