1332 Pine Street
Former Parsonage of Bishop Charles Manuel "Sweet Daddy" Grace
Built in 1936, this high-style, late Craftsman, two-story, wood-frame residence was built by Moses Cooper for Eugenia V. Davis Daniels (died 1936), a prominent Black member of the Waverly community and mother of Dr. L.M. Daniels. In the late 1940s, the House of Prayer congregation of Columbia purchased the property, which had been used as a rental residence since the passing of Daniels, and began using it as a parsonage for Bishop Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace (1884-1960) during his visits to the capital city.
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Bishop Charles Manuel "Sweet Daddy" Grace, undated. Image courtesy Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Born in Cape Verde and of Portuguese and African descent, Bishop Daddy Grace immigrated to the United States in the first decade of the 20th century. Settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bishop Grace founded the United House of Prayer for All People of the Church on the Rock of the Apostolic Faith in 1919. In the 1920s, he incorporated the church and embarked on a three-decade long evangelistic tour of the Southeast. In the early 1930s, the Bishop made his inaugural visit to Columbia, soon establishing the church’s first Columbia-based place of worship on Cherry Street. After the church acquired this Pine Street property in the late 1940s, it became his parsonage. The church’s acquisition of this property coincided with the City of Columbia-ordered permanent closure of the Cherry Street church due to noise complaints associated with late-night worship services. During this pivotal moment in the local congregation’s history, Bishop Daddy Grace, then lodging at the parsonage, oversaw the church’s relocation to its present-day location at 2421 Read Street. Over the next decade, Bishop Daddy Grace, a unique individual who sported long fingernails, bright, cutaway coats, jewels, and long hair, stayed at 1332 Pine Street at least once a year for his annual September revival, where he would use fire hoses to baptize converts en masse. Since 1946, the House of Prayer has owned the property.