As part of getting to know the congregation I’m now serving I’ve been reading about its history, including looking through old minutes.  As the Church in the county seat we’ve absorbed the membership of smaller congregations that have closed in the past.  One such congregation was the Presbyterian Church in Centre – a town I wasn’t familiar with.  I asked a few people who were in the Church but they hadn’t heard of it.  I looked it up in True Tales of Tipton County, a local history.  I found a great story that had been censored from a Victorian era novel written by Frances Boyd Calhoun, a Covington school teacher: Miss Minerva and William Green Hill. The event had taken place in the Centre church.

One Sunday a Mr. and Mrs. Simpson [the last members from Centre who transfered to Covington], who attended to the Communion, took a bottle out of the closet and used it serve Communion. By mistake they got the wrong bottle which contained, instead of wine, an old-time laxative called “Simmon’s Liver Regulator.” The results can be imagined. (True Tales of Tipton, Gaylon Neil Beasley, p. 120)