Marcelino Manuel da Graça

Marcelino Manuel da Graça's parents were Manuel (1837–1926) and Gertrude (1847–1933) da Graça. Marcelino da Graça's had five siblings, consisting of one brother, Benventura, and four sisters: Eugenia, Slyvia, Amalia, and Louise. He was born January 25, in Brava in the Cape Verde Islands, then a Portuguese possession off the west coast of Africa.[2] There is no verifiable information to confirm Grace's exact birth year, but most sources either state 1881 or 1884. The family Marcelino's father Manuel da Graça arrived in America at the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts aboard a ship called the Freeman in May 1902. It is unclear whether Marcelino was aboard the ship in 1902, but ship manifests show that he visited America in 1903, and in 1904 he came as a cabin passenger aboard the schooner called Luiza.

Marcelino Grace married twice. His first wife was Jane "Jennie" Lomba, a Cape Verdean woman also known as Jennie Lombard. They were married in 1909. They had a daughter, Irene, in 1910 and son, Norman in 1912. Norman died in 1947. Whether they officially divorced was disputed. His second wife was named Angelina (Montano) Grace, a woman of Mexican descent, whom he married in 1932. They had a son, Marcelino, in 1935. They divorced in 1937.

In her book Daddy Grace, Marie W. Dallam notes that the entire da Graça family were Roman Catholics in their homeland and opened up to different forms of the Christian experience once they immigrated to the United States.

Benventura da Graça would later become a Church of the Nazarene pastor in the U.S. Marcelino, however, was said inside the da Graça family (according to the research done by Dallam) to have always been a "special child". Unlike the conventional ministry of his brother, he went on to establish an independent Christian ministry. After becoming a famous bishop, it was recounted that as a youth he had received a commission to preach directly from God.

Entrance to the Mausoleum of Sweet Daddy Grace

After leaving his job as a railway cook, Marcelino, using the anglicized version of his name, Charles Manuel (Emmanuel) Grace, began using the title "Bishop". In 1919, he built the first House of Prayer in West Wareham, Massachusetts at the cost of $39. He later established branches in Charlotte, North Carolina and Newark, New Jersey.[2] Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Bishop Grace traveled America preaching and establishing the United House of Prayer for All People. The Constitution and By-Laws of The United House of Prayer, promulgated in 1929, stated that the purpose of the organization in pertinent part was "to erect and maintain places of worship and assembly where all people may gather prayer and to worship the Almighty God, irrespective of denomination or creed." He traveled extensively throughout the segregated South in the 1920s and 1930s preaching to integrated congregations years before the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and the religious ecumenical movements which followed.

Bishop Grace died in 1960 and is buried in the Pine Grove Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Faith-healing savior

The longtime residence of Grace at 11 Logan Circle, Washington, D.C.

For Bishop Grace and his followers the miraculous stories as told of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Bible did not end with their deaths. Grace asserted that such miracles were available again, through him.[2] As "Daddy Grace", the bishop and leader of the United House of Prayer, he was well known and respected by his followers as a faith healer and miracle worker.

Grace also claimed that by the power of the Holy Ghost he could raise the dead, which he claimed he did to his younger sister Jeannie (Eugenia), who reportedly died and was raised again by Grace.[3] She would accompany Grace in his missionary tours and testify to the fact.

• United House of Prayer for All People
• Religion in Black America

• Charles Emanuel "Daddy" Grace
• Audio interview about Daddy Grace with Marie Dallam