However it gets done, if a stump is someplace that matters, like in the middle of your lawn, it is going to require removal at some point. Removal involved taking the entite stump including roots out of the ground, and filling in the resulting hole completely. Depending on when or where you were raised, you may remember these stumps being removed with a good old-fashioned hand ax and serious chopping. As the stumps would age, they would get softer and chop out easier, but it still was quite a chore to get rid of them completely. People could chainsaw them out, but that was usually also a death sentence for the chain. People also have used lye or other chemical stump removers in the past to get rid of them. Both the lye and chemicals pose major threats to animals and will almost assuredly make the ground in the general area unusable for a while until the chemicals leech out. What’s a homeowner to do??