Frost, Donald McKay, 1877-1958

Donald McKay Frost (1877-1958), son of Edwin Parker and Mary Coachman McKay Frost, was born in Charleston, S.C. He graduated from Harvard in 1899 and from Harvard Law School in 1902. Returning to Charleston, he became a member of a law firm, a representative in South Carolina's General Assembly for four years, and a member of various fraternal organizations. In 1910, he married Mary Mitchell Ryerson ( -1941) of Lake Forest, Ill., and in 1912, he moved to Boston, Mass. He practiced law with a number of Boston firms until 1924, when he began to practice privately and less actively.

Frost became involved in the Boston Opera Association, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Club of Odd Volumes, the Grolier Club, the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society. In addition, he was elected to the American Antiquarian Society in 1939 and to its Council in 1940. His chief avocation was the "reading and collecting of books dealing with the early history of our western country, with particular emphasis on the discovery and development of the Rocky Mountain regions." He built up an excellent collection of western Americana and in 1947 presented more than four thousand volumes on western history and travel to the AAS. His monograph, entitled "Notes on General Ashley, the Overland Trail, and South Pass," was published by the AAS in 1945. Frost suffered a severe stroke in 1946 and he died in Boston twelve years later.