Christiaan Casper Stumph

Following the annexation of our country by France on 10 July 1810, the entire administrative power was restructured and centralised according to the French model. A departmental organisation was established, headed by a prefect for the departments, a sub-prefect for the districts, and a maire (mayor) for the municipalities.

On 12 March 1811, Christiaan Caspar Stumph was appointed maire of the Canton of Aalten. He is therefore considered the first mayor of the municipality of Aalten. He held this position until 1 January 1818, when a new administrative regulation was established.

Stumph lived at the Smees. He was a person of independent means and an organist in Aalten, a man of integrity with many noble objectives. On 14 May 1819, at the age of 74, he married 30-year-old Caatjen Weversborg in Aalten. As far as is known, their marriage remained childless.

Christiaan Casper Stumph was a man who frequently endeavored to put an end to existing abuses. One of his greatest grievances was the practice of burial inside the church or in the churchyard within the village. Indeed, this often led to unimaginable situations. On several occasions, subsidences occurred in the church floor, and the owners of these graves failed to carry out the necessary repairs. For weeks, the pews near the hole in question would be uninhabitable. Consequently, a regulation was established stating that churchwardens, in cases of negligence, were permitted to contract out the necessary repairs, whereby the plot in question would revert to the church.

Burial mound at ‘het Smees’

The condition of the cemetery around the church was also frequently poor. Because burials had not been conducted at a “sufficient” depth for a long time, bones regularly came to the surface. A bone collector gathered these remains from time to time for two bushels of rye per year and threw them into the “Beenhalle,” a small building in the churchyard on the Market side. If the stock became too large, it was cleared out, and the walls were cleaned and repaired where necessary.

With the improvement of social conditions and higher hygiene standards, changes slowly but surely occurred in this area, including the obligation to make graves sufficiently deep. A law to prohibit burial within towns and villages, following foreign examples, could not yet find favour in our country. People could not bring themselves to take the major step of breaking with all traditions and leaving the dead “just anywhere in the ground” far outside the village.

Stumph was a proponent of burial outside the village; he decided to have an “Outer Cemetery” created in one of the Smees meadows. In 1818, the foundation deed and will were drawn up. Christiaan Casper Stumph passed away on 6 January 1820. According to his last wish, he was buried at the old Smees. This site is still recognizable today as a burial mound, located on Nannielaantje.

Mayor Stumph was succeeded by Mr. Arnoldus Florentinus Roelvink.