Elon Musk Family History

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28th, 1971 to Errol and Maye Musk in Pretoria, South Africa.

He grew up in Waterkloof, an upmarket suburb of Pretoria.  His parents divorced when Elon was eight and he stayed with his father, something he later regretted.  He was, according to his later accounts, repeatedly bullied at school and took refuge in comic books.  He said that having Asperger’s made him very bad at picking up social clues.

After finishing high school in Pretoria, Elon left for Canada in 1989, followed by his younger siblings Kimbal and Tosca and his Canadian-born mother Maye.

Musk in America.  Elon studied at the University of Pennsylvania and briefly at Stanford before leaving in 1995 to launch an internet startup.  He began a web software company which was sold for $300 million in 1999 and an online bank which became Paypal and was sold for $1.5 billion in 2002.

He now had serious money to invest in new ventures, of which there have been many.  His best-known businesses today are Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer, and SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company.  He has succeeded here through innovation and these companies have made him the richest man in the world.

In his businesses he has been a workaholic and required that employees show equal focus and dedication.  He has been married twice, had other relationships, and is the father of a reported thirteen children.  He sometimes likes having his children around him and has said that he is doing his best to help the world’s underpopulation crisis.  His life story was covered in Walter Isaacson’s biography Elon Musk published in 2023.

In October 2022 Elon Musk raised $44 billion to acquire Twitter and he transformed that social media platform (now “X”) into his own image.  In 2024 he moved into the political arena by publicly backing Trump for President and financially supporting his campaign.

Elon was close to Trump’s side at the time that Trump won the Presidential election in November 2024.  Indeed he was subsequently offered a position in Trump’s executive team.  He would oversee DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) with its mission to slash the Federal payroll. And his closeness to Trump has given him a big political influence.

Musks in England

Musk is not a common English surname.  There were just 650 Musks recorded in the UK 1881 census.  Suffolk accounted for 21% of these Musks, followed by Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and London.  It may have been that Musk was an abbreviation of Muschet or Musket, first recorded with William Muschet who held the Bishopric of Ely in Cambridgeshire in 1165.

Musk in Suffolk.  Elon Musk’s ancestors in England reportedly started with John Musk who married Maryann Edwards in Tuddenham, Suffolk in 1791.

The Musk line in Suffolk from John Musk ran as follows:

• Henry Musk (1797-1871)
• Eliza Musk (1843-1913)
• Harry Musk (1862-1917)

John’s son Henry was a farm laborer.  He and his wife Charlotte lived at Exning in Suffolk and had a large family.  Their numbers included Henry who emigrated with his young wife to America in 1858 and Eliza who had three sons born out of wedlock, her eldest son Harry being born in 1862.

Eliza’s two other sons died young.  She moved to London, working as a servant there, but returned to Exning to marry in 1884.  Her son Harry had remained in Exning during this time living with his grandparents.  He married Mary Wyman in 1889 and then moved to London himself.  However, his marriage fizzled out and Harry left his wife and their two children in London, departing for a new life in South Africa in 1902.

Reader Feedback: My paternal grandfather was Herbert Ernest Musk. I have traced his line back to Nicholas Musk, born in 1535 in Suffolk, and his wife Eme Suckling.  I believe they are also the ancestors of Elon Musk. Margaret Cottrell (magsmith@ntlworld.com).

Reader Feedback: Was there any connection in the ancestry of Elon Musk with Edmund Musk, born in 1609, or Nicholas Musk in 1651 or Edward Musk in 1694?  Brian Musk (brianmusk1@gmail.com).

Reader Feedback: I have a Brooks family from Brinkley in Cambridgeshire and also from Exning in Suffolk who married Musks and emigrated.  Sheila Wood (sheila.lockwood@btinternet.com).

 

Musks in Pretoria

Harry Musk came to South Africa in 1902 after the fighting had ended in the three-year Boer War.  He may or may not have married Lucy Champion in 1903.  But Lucy did take the Musk name and they made their home first in Cape Town, where Harry was recorded as a bricklayer, and then in Pretoria, where he worked as a mason.

He and Lucy raised six children, four boys and two girls.  Harry died in September 1917, just one month after the birth of his youngest son Walter.

Nine months after Harry’s death Lucy married again – to Newcastle-born Walter Evans in June 1918.  They had one daughter, Bernice born in 1921.  Walter died in 1930 and Lucy lived until 1946.

Walter and Cora Musk.  Lucy’s son Walter by Harry became a sergeant in the South African army.  He was said to have been “quiet” and “grumpy” and rather outmatched by his more outgoing British wife Cora Amelia Robinson.

Cora was Elon Musk’s grandmother and is remembered by him as follows:

“Cora was an important part of my childhood. She was very strict, but also kind and I could always count on her.

She grew up very poor in England during the Great Depression, only to be bombed in World War Two. To earn money for food, she cleaned houses, leaving me with a lasting respect for those who do so. My Nana was one of the poor working-class girls with no one to protect her.”

Cora had South African connections in Pretoria through her Dutch mother Brechje.  This probably facilitated her move there during the war.  She married Walter Musk in Johannesburg in 1944.

Errol and Michael Musk.  Walter and Cora had two sons who both made their mark in the professions – Errol as an engineer and Michael as a dermatologist.

Errol’s career was the more flamboyant.  His engineering nous reportedly made him a millionaire by the time he was thirty.  His business was involved in large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base.  It was said that part of his wealth came from ownership in an emerald mine in Zambia.

He was regarded by his peers as a brilliant engineer.  But at home he could be abusive and manipulative.  He was all his life a philanderer.  Indeed at the age of seventy-two he fathered a child with his step-daughter.

Maye Musk the Matriarch

The Haldemans.  Maye Haldeman and her twin sister Kaye had been born in Saskatchewan, Canada to Joshua and Wyn Haldeman. Joshua ran a profitable chiropractic business there.  However, he moved his family to South Africa in 1950 when the twins were still toddlers.

They came because Joshua, a Nazi sympathizer in the 1930’s, believed strongly in the apartheid policies of the new South African Government.  Still, Maye remembered her parents more as adventurers and entrepreneurs instilling into their five children a work ethic from an early age.

Joshua himself flew airplanes.  He was killed in 1974 when his plane’s wheels got caught up with a powerline during a practice landing.

Maye met Errol Musk in Pretoria at high school and married him in 1970.  Their first son Elon, born in 1971, was named after her American grandfather John Elon Haldeman who had died young from diabetes complications in 1909.  John Elon was a descendant of Swiss Haldemans who had immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1750’s.

The line from Swiss Haldeman immigrant to Maye ran as follows:

• Jacob Haldeman (1722-1785) from Switzerland to Pennsylvania
• Abraham Haldeman (1757-1798) in Pennsylvania
• John Haldeman (1783-1815) in Pennsylovania
• John Haldeman (1808-1881) from Pennsylvania to Illinois
• Jeremiah Haldeman (1846-1925) from Pennsylvania to Minnesota
• John Elon Haldeman (1871-1909) from Minnesota to Saskatchewan
• Joshua Haldeman (1902-1974) from Saskatchewan to South Africa
• Maye Musk nee Haldeman (b. 1948) from Saskatchewan to South Africa

Maye’s Latter Life.  Maye returned to Canada in 1989, ten years after her divorce from Errol Musk.  In Toronto, she combined a modelling career with a business as a dietitian and with successfully raising Elon’s two younger siblings Kimbal and Tosca as a single mother.

Her modelling career has in fact spanned fifty years.  She became Covergirl’s oldest spokesmodel in 2017 at the age of sixty-nine.   And as the glamorous supermodel mother of the world’s richest man, she made a stunning appearance with him at the Met Gala in New York in  May 2022.

Elon Musk’s Family Tree

• Musk in England

• John Musk (1767-1834) from Suffolk m. Maryann Edwards (b. 1772) in Suffolk in 1791
• – Henry Musk (1797-1871)

• Henry Musk from Cambridgeshire m. Charlotte Lane (1801-1885) in Cambridgeshire in 1824
• – John Musk (1826-1916) m. Melinna Brooks
• – Edward Musk (1827-1847)
• – William Musk (1831-1887) m. Ann Levett
• – Henry Musk (1833-1921) m. Harriet Parr, emigrated to America
• – Richard Musk (1838-1900) m. Sophia Gaine
• – Eliza Musk (1843-1913)

• Eliza Musk and unknown; m. William Bridgeman (b. 1828) later in 1884
• – Harry Musk (1862-1917)
• – Arthur and Ernest Musk (b. 1870, died young)

• Musk in South Africa

• Harry Musk from Suffolk m. Mary Wyman (1869-1949) in Cambridgeshire in 1889, separated; rem. Lucy Champion (1880-1946) in South Africa in 1903.  After Harry’s death Lucy rem. Walter Evans (1879-1930) in 1918.
• – William Musk (b. 1890) died young, with Mary
• – Ellen Musk (1892-1987), with Mary
• – Louis Musk (1904-1956) m. Florence Channon
• – Harry Musk (1906-1974) m. Helen Hartogh
• – Pedro Musk (1907-1956) m. Laura Channon
• – Mabel Musk (1909-1980) m. Arthur Mason
• – Joan Musk (b. 1911) m. Hendrik van Malsen
• – Walter Musk (1917-1986), grandfather of Elon Musk
• – Bernice Evans (1921-2014), half sister m. John Raubenheimer, Lucy with Walter Evans

• Walter Henry Musk from Pretoria m. Cora Amelia Robinson from Lancashire (1923-2011) in Johannesburg in 1944
• – Errol Musk (b. 1946), father of Elon Musk
• – Michael Musk (b. 1952) m. Anne Frazer

• Errol Graham Musk from Pretoria m. Maye Haldeman (b. 1948) in 1970, divorced in 1979; rem. Heidi-Mari Bezuidenhout in 1992, divorced in 2010
• – Elon Musk (b. 1971), richest man in the world
• – Kimbal Musk (b. 1972) m. Jen Lewin (divorced); rem. Christiana Wyly, restauranteer
• – Tosca Musk (b. 1974), mother through sperm donor and IVF, film-maker
• – Alexandra (Ali) Musk (b. 1993) m. Guy Steuart, with Heidi-Mari
• – Asha (Rose) Musk (b. 1998). with Heidi-Mari
• – Elliot Musk (b. 2017) with Jan Bezuidenhout

• Musk in Canada/America

• Elon Musk m. Justine Wilson (b. 1972) from Canada in 2000, divorced in 2008; rem. Talulah Riley (b. 1985) from England in 2010, divorced in 2016
• Nevada Musk (2002-2012), died from SIDS, with Justine
• twin Griffin Musk (b. 2004), football player, with Justine
• twin Vivian Wilson (b. 2004), estranged trans daughter, with Justine
• triplet sons Kai, Saxon and Damian Musk (b. 2006), with Justine
• two sons and one daughter – X AE A-Xii or Lil X (b. 2020), Exa Dark Siderael (b. 2021), and Techno Mechanicus (b. 2023) – with Claire Boucher aka Grimes
• twins Strider and Alice (b. 20-1) and a third child (b. 2024), with Shivon Zilis
• and a reported child (b. 2024), with Ashley St. Clair