William Stahley Troxell (June 11, 1893 – August 10, 1957) was an American writer in the Pennsylvania German language. Born in Rising Sun, Pennsylvania, Troxell's dialect pseudonym was Pumpernickel Bill. He was a frequent author of dialect columns in the Allentown Call-Chronicle (later The Morning Call) newspaper from 1925 to 1955 and served as president of the Pennsylvania German Society from 1952 to 1957. Troxell was a popular teacher of Pennsylvania German, as well as a prolific author of poems, pageants, and radio shows. He was a graduate of Kutztown State Teachers College and Muhlenberg College.
Troxell, a member of the German Reformed Church, died in Allentown and is buried at Neffs Union Cemetery in Neffs, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Lehigh County Historical Society and the National Society of Sons of the American Revolution. Troxell was a founder of the Grundsau Lodge movement and its fersommlings as well as an early supporter of the Kutztown Folk Festival.
Bibliography
- Aus Pennsylfawnia: An Anthology of Translations into the Pennsylvania German Dialect (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938, 1949)
- J. William Frey, A Morphological and Syntactical Study of the Pennsylvania German Dialect of Pumpernickle Bill (M.A. Thesis, University of Illinois, 1939; typewritten).
- J. William Frey, Supplement to a Morphological and Syntactical Study of the Pennsylvania-German Dialect of Pumpernickle Bill (1939)
- (with Thomas Brendle), The Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Tales (1944)
References
- Obituary, The Morning Call, August 11, 1957, pp. 2, 15.
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