One of the historical figures Elon admires is Winston Churchill. During the Second Boer War, the soon to be British prime minister worked as a war correspondent for The Morning Post. Churchill, who used to be an army officer, had resigned from the army to pursue a political career. But when he heard of the conflict in Africa, he couldn’t resist to be a part of it.11,79
Churchill arrived to the conflict zone. Controlling the railroads was important during the war, so British armored trains patrolled the main routes. As Churchill traveled with one of these trains, the Boers lay in ambush. “I have had, in the last four years, the advantage, if it be an advantage, of many strange and varied experiences, from which the student of realities might draw profit and instruction,” Churchill wrote. “But nothing was so thrilling as this: to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells and the artillery, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine – poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all – the expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the realization of powerlessness, and the alternations of hope and despair – all this for seventy minutes by the clock with only four inches of twisted iron work to make the difference between danger, captivity, and shame on the one hand – safety, freedom, and triumph on the other.”11
Despite that Churchill worked as an unarmed civilian reporter, the Boers captured him as a prisoner of war. Together with the British soldiers who survived the ambush, he was sent to the capital of the Boers: Pretoria. When he arrived, he became a prisoner in a school building temporarily converted to prison for officers. The name of the school was Staats Model School.
After the war ended, the two regions where the Boers lived became a part of the Union of South Africa. The victorious British renamed Staats Model School to Pretoria Boys High School.77 Several years later, the same school would educate an aspiring space and vehicle entrepreneur.
Fourteen years after the peace, Elon’s grandfather Walter Henry James Musk was born in Pretoria. He was the son of Harry Musk, who had married the seventeen year younger Lucy Frances Champion from Caledon, South Africa. They had six children.
The artisan Walter married Cora Amelia Robinson from England. They had two children: Errol Musk, born in 1946, and Michael Musk, born in 1952. Errol would become the father of a billionaire, but first he had to find a wife.
Elon’s mother Maye Musk was born as Maye Haldeman. The Haldemans can be traced back to 1808 when Sarah Haldeman was born in Virginia, US. It’s not known if she married, or if she lived with a man, but it’s known that she in 1838 gave birth to John Haldeman.97 The family had now moved west through the country to Bloomington, Illinois. This wasn’t a move without any risks – they moved to the undiscovered frontier of the American wilderness.
Euro-American settlers, who had arrived to the area in the 1820s because of the rich soil, established Bloominton in 1831. The town had eight stores, three groceries, two taverns, two lawyers, three physicians, a handsome academy building, two steam mills for sawing, and a population of 700.86,92
Before the settlers arrived, the native Indians of the Kickapoo people lived off the land. It turned out the settlers and the Indians couldn’t live together. The Black Hawk War of 1832 took place in Illinois. It was a short war, only a few months long, between the US military and the Kickapoo people. One of the soldiers who fought in the war was a 23-year-old Abraham Lincoln.
After the war ended, the soon to be 16th President of the United States, Lincoln, visited Bloomington many times since he worked as a lawyer in nearby Springfield. It was in Bloomington Lincoln held a speech known as the “Lost Speech” because the reporters were so engaged by the speech they neglected to take notes.86
John Haldeman met his wife Evaline Haldeman in Bloomington. They had a son, John Elon Haldeman, born in 1872. In 1900, John Elon Haldeman married Almeda Jane Norman. They had two children: Joshua Norman Haldeman and Almeda Haldeman. The family had now moved to a log cabin in the small town Pequot Lakes, Minnesota.
Born prematurely, Almeda Jane Norman had to spend the first months of her life in an infant incubator. When she was growing up, she dreamed of going to high school, but her father didn’t like the dream as he opposed the idea to educate girls. Almeda would later promote women’s right to vote.91
A doctor diagnosed John Elon with diabetes and gave him six months to live. He went to a chiropractor to find a cure, and he recovered sufficiently to carry on with his normal daily routines for several years until he passed away in 1909. To look after her husband, the nurse-schoolteacher Almeda began studying to become a chiropractor herself. In 1905, she graduated from the Chiropractic School & Cure in Minneapolis.91,93
In 1907, the Haldeman family moved to Herbert, Canada. It’s town in a region that at the same time can be haunted by a flood, a grass fire, and a snowstorm. The reason they moved was that they believed that if you have diabetes, you must live in a cold, dry climate.88 Almeda worked as a chiropractor and was most likely the first one in Canada with this profession. The family also started up a small restaurant and a boarding house.91
With inspiration from his mother, Joshua decided to become a chiropractor. Chiropractors had previously treated him after an accident while playing a game of shinny, which is similar to ice hockey. He played it on a frozen pond, and during the game, he received a blow to his head. After the accident, Joshua had a failing eyesight, but recovered after a visit to the Palmer School of Chiropractic.91 In 1926, Joshua graduated after four years of studies, and he received the degree Doctor of Chiropractic. Throughout his life, Joshua studied at nine different universities and colleges if postgraduate programs are included.95
Joshua married Eve Peters in 1927, and their son Joshua Jerry Noel Haldeman was born seven years later. But the Great Depression of the late 1920s hit the family hard. They lost their farm because they were unable to maintain payments on equipment purchased on credit. Because of these events, Joshua became suspicious of financial institutions, which lasted throughout his life. Another result of these events was that the couple separated. But Joshua clenched his fists and endured life. His favorite quote became: “If you always enjoy everything you do, you will never do anything that you don’t enjoy.”95
Without the farm, Joshua began working with various jobs across the country. He worked as a construction worker, as a cowboy, and as a rodeo performer. While working at these jobs, he mastered skills such as boxing, wrestling, exhibition rope spinning, and pistol shooting. A biographical note described his life during the Great Depression:
“He has traveled extensively in Canada; and during the depression by freight and passenger coal tender from Vancouver to Halifax. He has lived with the homesteaders in the bush country, trappers in the lower Peace River, farmed in the heart of the dust bowl when it was 100 percent on relief, been a stowaway on an ocean-going boat, and lived in the hobo jungles outside of most of the cities in Canada.”95