Career
Born in Virgil, New York, Frank was in the temperance and abolitionist movements while living in New York, In 1839, Frank moved to Southport (now Kenosha, Wisconsin), Wisconsin Territory. He published the Southport Telegram with Charles Sholes in 1839 and was the editor which supported the temperance, Free Soil Party, anti-slavery movements. Frank then founded the first literary magazine in Wisconsin in 1843: The Garland of the West.
He served in the Wisconsin Territorial Council from 1843 to 1846 and then in the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Republican in 1861.
In 1850, Frank was mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin and then was postmaster in Kenosha. From 1870 to 1882, he worked in the United States Treasury Department in Washington, District of Columbia
Frank also served as regent of the University of Wisconsin. He died in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1894.