Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainEstablished 1859, Union Cemetery holds the grave of murder victim Tillie Smith — headstone reads 'She died in defense of her honor' — with reports of a girl in white who vanishes from passing vehicles
East Avenue, Hackettstown, NJ 07840
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
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Free
Cemetery is publicly accessible at no charge.
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Limited Access
Grassed cemetery grounds with some uneven terrain around older sections. Tillie Smith's headstone is near the cemetery road.
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Est. 1859 · Established 1859 as Hackettstown's municipal cemetery · Holds grave of Tillie Smith (1868–1886), murder victim of documented 1886 case · Headstone inscription 'She died in defense of her honor' — community-placed memorial · Associated haunting accounts circulated in NJ paranormal literature since 1980s
Union Cemetery was laid out in 1859 on the eastern edge of Hackettstown, serving the town's growing Methodist and broader Protestant community. The cemetery reflects mid-19th-century rural New Jersey burial traditions: orderly rows of headstones in a grassy enclosure, with markers ranging from plain granite slabs to carved Victorian monuments for prominent local families.
The grave of Matilda 'Tillie' Smith occupies a prominent position and carries an inscription unusual for the period. Tillie Smith was murdered on April 9, 1886, at age 18; she had been working as a kitchen employee at the Centenary Collegiate Institute when campus janitor James Titus raped and strangled her. Titus was convicted and eventually confessed. The crime was covered by newspapers across New Jersey and the metropolitan area.
The headstone placed at Tillie's grave reads 'She died in defense of her honor.' Community members who knew her or followed the case contributed to the memorial. The inscription encodes both the violent circumstances of her death and a Victorian-era framing of female virtue, a combination that has made the marker the focal point of continuing remembrance more than 140 years after the murder.
The cemetery grounds remain active and are maintained by the borough. The Tillie Smith grave is findable by general location near the cemetery's main road; it has been visited and photographed by local historians, journalists, and paranormal investigators since at least the 1980s.
Sources
The central paranormal account at Union Cemetery involves a young woman in white seen walking East Avenue near the cemetery entrance after dark. Multiple witnesses describe the same basic encounter: a girl in period or light-colored clothing at the road's edge, sometimes appearing to approach a vehicle, and then disappearing before any contact is made. Some accounts describe her briefly entering a car before vanishing from the back seat. The resemblance to Tillie Smith — a young woman of approximately the same age who died violently in the same neighborhood — has made the identification conventional in local ghost-tour and paranormal accounts.
Only in Your State documented the Tillie Smith grave and the accompanying road legend in coverage of Warren County haunted sites, establishing the account's connection to a documented historical murder. Visitors to the grave itself report cold spots near the headstone regardless of ambient temperature, and a general atmospheric weight in the section of the cemetery where Smith is buried.
The Union Cemetery accounts form a paired tradition with the Centenary University campus haunting accounts — the murder site and the burial site — creating a small geography of Tillie Smith ghost lore in Hackettstown. The road-apparition pattern is a recognized type in New Jersey paranormal tradition: young female victims of violence returning to haunt the routes they traveled, consistent with accounts at similar sites across the state.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Visit the grave of Matilda 'Tillie' Smith (1868–1886), murder victim whose prominent headstone reads 'She died in defense of her honor.' The grave is one of the most visited sites in Warren County paranormal lore; reports of a young woman in white near the road outside the cemetery have circulated since at least the 1990s.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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