Thirty thousand pioneers. Here is our chance to reform the funeral industry for a million souls and make funerals free again.
The Elgin Mansion has been waiting for 5 years to make it a nonprofit natural burial cemetery in North Carolina.
A million souls is the dream. 30,000 neighbors is the ask.
No money is needed until the seller is ready to close. Help make free funerals possible for every family.
Want to donate $100 now? We’ll send you a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, and a future membership certificate as our thanks.
How do we make free funerals possible?
It started with a prayer: I asked God to how to make funerals free again. The answer came back plain: “crowd-fund land and dig our own graves, like our ancestors taught us.”
Families burying their own. Under trees, not headstones.
Don’t miss the opportunity to dress your own Nana for heaven or help dig your Papa’s grave.
No funeral packages. No sales pitch. No one making a profit on your grief.
Land not owned by me or by you but owned and operated as a community land project
This project can make natural burial affordable for everyone with simply crowdfunding our own land, getting a survey and digging our own graves:
- A return to simple and traditional ways of caring for the departed with home, church, graveside services.
- No chemicals nor forever substances so its regenerating and kind to the planet.
- Family led services cut their own costs and essentially make funerals free again.
A nonprofit natural burial membership cemetery society with properly surveyed land and informed directors can’t do worse than what’s reported in the news.
A place to rest in peace. We are giving it away.
We do this in honor of John and Margaret Ellen Wallace because in 1950 my grandmother was pregnant with her thirteenth child when my grandfather passed away. When grandmother had nothing else left they took their only transportation to pay for the grave, a 1947 Ford Pickup and we want back.
Sign the free pledge
Since we have 1,000 signatures in North Carolina, we’re aiming for 30,000 here locally to close on the Elgin Mansion.
No money is needed until the seller is ready to close. Your signature is the proof: 30,000 signatures show a bank there’s real demand, so it can consider a bridge loan. No loan is promised. Your $100 pledge is due only at land transfer.
The land
- Elgin Mansion, 206 Shaver Road, Macon, North Carolina (Warren County).
- 300 acres total: the house on 45.28 acres, plus 255 more acres of cleared fields and forest that can be bought with it.
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973. The house dates to about 1827–1832.
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The house
Around the property
Property details
- Land: 45.28 acres with the house. An additional 255 acres of cleared fields and forest can be bought with it, about 300 acres total.
- House: about 5,101 sq ft of living space, two stories.
- 4 bedrooms; 3 full and 2 half baths.
- Main house dates to about 1827; the listing gives the year built as 1832.
- Restored 1790s guest cabin with one bedroom.
- Four-stall horse barn with two tack rooms, paddocks, riding fields and pastures.
- Three-bay detached garage with finished living space upstairs.
- 14-foot ceilings, original wide-plank hardwood floors, four gas-log fireplaces, two elevators.
- Geothermal heating and cooling, with propane backup.
- Crawl space basement. Metal roof. Well water and septic.
- Local Historic Designation and National Historic Designation.
- Warren County. Parcel number G7 7B.
- Within reach of Lake Gaston, Raleigh, Durham and the Virginia border.
Details from the public listing: see the full Elgin Mansion listing on CapCenter.
The ask: 30,000 neighbors
30,000 pioneers. $100 each. Due only when the land transfers.
No one rich. No one company. Just a lot of neighbors crowdfunding a cemetery, each doing a small part. One field at a time.
The dream: a million souls
One estate. Room for generations. Free funerals for a million souls.
147,500
full-body burials
500 an acre × 295 acres
885,000
cremated remains
3,000 an acre × 295 acres
About 1,000,000
together
Together: approximately a million people, a million souls.
The promise, plainly
Signing is free. We’re gathering 30,000 pledges of $100 each toward buying Elgin Mansion at 206 Shaver Road, Macon, North Carolina, for a nonprofit natural burial cemetery. Your $100 pledge is due at land transfer—not when you sign. We have not yet acquired the land, and burial space is not currently available. Membership payments or donations before land transfer are optional. Signature pledges are commitments, not money already collected.
How you help
- Sign the free pledge. Nothing is due until the land transfers.
- Share this page. Tell one neighbor about free funerals. Then another.
- Talk to us. Email info@letsbetrees.org
Thirty thousand pioneers. A million souls. Make funerals free again.
Let’s be trees.