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 by 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 were 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 twelve children (he 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 in his Presidential campaign.

And he was close by 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 Cabinet to manage Government efficiency.  His closeness to Trump has given him a 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.  Their son Harry, born in 1797, 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 found a new wife, Lucy Champion, in South Africa and they made their home first in Cape Town where he was recorded as a bricklayer and then in Pretoria where he was a mason.  He and Lucy raised six children, four boys and two girls.  Harry died in 1917, one month after the birth of his youngest son Walter.  Lucy remarried in 1918, four months after Harry’s death.

Walter and Cora Musk.  Walter became a sergeant in the South African army, 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.”

She came to South Africa and married Walter 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.  The rumor was that he had a share 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

Maye Haldeman and her twin sister Kaye had been born in Saskatchewan, Canada to Joshua and Wyn Haldeman.  But their parents moved to South Africa in 1950 when they were toddlers.

They came because Joshua, who ran a profitable chiropractic business, believed strongly in the apartheid policies of the new South African Government.  Still, Maye remembered her parents there more as adventurers and entrepreneurs who instilled into their five children a work ethic from an early age.

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, a descendant of Swiss Haldemans who had immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1750’s.

Maye returned to Canada in 1989, ten years after her divorce.  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 (b. 1869) in Cambridgeshire in 1889, separated; rem. Lucy Champion (1880-1946) in South Africa around 1903.  After Harry’s death Lucy rem. Walter Evans in 1918.
• – William Musk (b. 1890), with Mary
• – Ellen Musk (b. 1892), 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)

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

• Errol Graham Musk from Pretoria m. Maye Haldeman 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 (b. 2020), Exa Dark Siderael (b. 2021) and Techno Mechanicus (b. 2023), with girlfriend Grimes
• twins Strider and Alice (b. 2021) plus third child (b. 2024), with girlfriend Shivon Zilis