Born in Burgpreppach, Bavaria, to Judel Steina and Isaac Frank, William Frank—known as Wolf—was as a journeyman weaver and textile worker in several German cities before migrating to the United States at the age of 21. There he first plied the trade of so many German Jewish immigrants, peddling across Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, before quitting the road and running a dry goods store in Ohio.

In 1843 he married Pauline Wormser, also a German Jewish immigrant, with whom he had eight children. In 1846 they settled in Pittsburgh, among the earliest Jews to settle there. They were founders of Rodef Shalom, the oldest surviving synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Frank served as president at the time of the dedication of the congregation’s first permanent building, in 1862. He also helped found the city’s Hebrew Benevolent Society.

In Pittsburgh Frank went into business with his brother-in-law Ephraim Wormser, first in dry goods and then, in the 1850s, moving into the glass manufacturing, which was becoming one of the city’s major industries. The factory, initially under the name Frank & Wormser and later William Frank & Sons, produced bottles and flasks for pharmaceuticals, liquor, and food products until it burnt down in 1876.