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==Life==
Moses Elias Levy, a [[Sephardi Jews|Sephardi Jewish]] businessman,slave trade financier, was born in [[Essaouira|Mogador]], [[Morocco]]. As a young man he went to England and the British West Indies, making a fortune in [[lumber]] on St. Thomas.<ref>Kurt F. Stone, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ACTF56SnaykC&pg=PA4 ''The Jews of Capitol Hill: A Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members''], 2010, page 4</ref><ref>Roger Moore, Ron Kurtz, [https://books.google.com/books?id=wek0d8Wm3KcC ''Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach''], 2001, p. 1873</ref> He married a Sephardi woman whose ancestors had left Spain in the 15th-century expulsion, migrating to the Protestant Netherlands and England. Some later migrated to the Caribbean as English colonists during the British occupation of the [[Danish West Indies]] (now the [[United States Virgin Islands]]). Moses Levy was a first cousin and business partner of Phillip Benjamin, the father of [[Judah P. Benjamin]], the future Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America.<ref>''Mosaic: Jewish Life in Florida'' (Coral Gables, FL: MOSAIC, Inc., 1991): 9</ref>
In the United States, Levy soon purchased 50,000 acres in north-central Florida, where he developed Pilgrimage Plantation, a refuge for persecuted European Jews. He also was among the founders of the town of [[Micanopy, Florida|Micanopy]]. Levy is frequently noted as the father of U.S. Senator [[David Levy Yulee]], the first senator of Jewish ancestry.<ref name=Monaco>{{cite book
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