Many of his followers claimed miraculous acts of faith healing while attending services and others saw his ministry as a sign from God of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

Marcelino da Graça's had five siblings, consisting of one brother, Benventura, and four sisters: Eugenia, Slyvia, Amalia, and Louise.

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.

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.

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".

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.

[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.

[4] Active during the early and mid-20th century, Grace used attention-getting maneuvers such as wearing loudly colored suits with bold, different-colored piping and shiny buttons, along with glitzy, expensive jewelry and long, unpainted fingernails.

Bishop Grace died Tuesday, January 12, 1960 in Los Angeles following a heart attack Friday and a stroke on Sunday.