[2] Through his maternal aunt Josephine Fountaine, he was also the nephew of Hollywood screenwriter, and founder of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, Malcolm Stuart Boylan.
[6] Frakes then went on to earn his Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara where his dissertation was directed by Wilbur Jacobs.
[7] Frakes then revised his doctoral dissertation and published it as Laboratory for Liberty: The South Carolina Legislative Committee System, 1719-1776.
While teaching he also published Pollution Papers (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971) and Minorities in California History (Random, House, 1971), both co-edited with his colleague Curtis B. Solberg.
[12] Frakes married teacher and librarian Catherine Rose Kay Davies (1932–2016), whom he met when they were both students at Stanford.