Kevin O'Kelly (left) on the steppes of Mongolia, 1996. Kevin O'Kelly is the alter ego of a retired college professor.

Moses Elias Levy Born in Morocco in 1781, Moses Elias Levy established himself as a merchant in the Danish West Indies (today's Virgin Islands) in the early 1800s. From Saint Thomas, he traded with the nearby Spanish island of Puerto Rico, and supplied arms to the Spanish army fighting revolutionary forces in Venezuela. Levy moved to Cuba and tried his hand at sugarcane planting before buying 53,000 acres in Florida, shortly before that territory was transferred from Spain to the United States in 1821. He settled in Florida where he planted sugarcane and hoped to colonize his lands with persecuted Jews from Europe. It was on a trip to recruit colonists that he published "A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery" in London in 1828. His dreams of colonization ended with the devastation of his properties in the Seminole War of 1835-42. Moses Levy died in 1853. His son, David Levy Yulee, was the first Jew to serve in the United States Senate.

Neill Macaulay (left, in Cuba with Fidel Castro, 1959) was a native of South Carolina who spent a lot of time in Latin America and East Asia. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea in 1957-58 and in Fidel Castro's army in Cuba in 1958-59. Returning to the U.S. in 1960, he wound up in graduate school at the University of Texas, where he received a Ph.D. in History in 1965. He spent most of the next two years in Brazil on a postdoctoral fellowship researching the 1924-26 revolutionary movement led by Luis Carlos Prestes. For twenty years, beginning in 1966, Macaulay taught Latin American history at the University of Florida. He published five books in that field. He wrote fiction under the pseudonym "Kevin O'Kelly." He died in 2007.

	Chris Monaco (left) examines an artifact at the Black Seminole archeological site, Peliklakaha, Florida, 2001.
	Chris Monaco is an independent scholar and documentary film maker. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida and has received awards from the Florida Historical Society and the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. He is a contributor to the Florida Historical Quarterly, American Jewish History, and American Jewish Archives Journal. His book, "Moses Levy of Florida: Jewish Utopian and Ante-Bellum Reformer," was published in December 2005 by Louisiana State University Press.

"Terrestrial Mammals of the West Indies: Contributions" Editors:

Rafael Borroto-Páez is Professor at Instituto de Ecologia y Sistematica, La Habana, Cuba.

Charles A. Woods is Curator Emeritus, Division of Mammals, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL and Adjunct Professor, Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT.

Florence E. Sergile is in International Programs of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.