On a Sunday evening in the 1880s, a young Latter-day Saint named Margaret Williams traveled with her mother from their home in Samaria, Idaho, to a sacrament meeting in the Bear Lake Stake Tabernacle in Paris, Idaho. Williams later wrote that she and her mother “sat in the gallery on the south side of the tabernacle balcony close to the stand.” The mother and daughter were almost certainly running late for the service, to settle for such an undesirable area of the meetinghouse. This was a time before individual sacrament cups—a time in which churchgoers all sipped from the same shared goblet—and where Williams and her mother were sitting, they were all but guaranteed to be among the last to drink. In a stunning reversal from 21st-century Latter-day Saint sacrament meetings, the front rows of the meetinghouse were the most coveted seats in the 19th century because by the time the cup reached the back of the room and into the gallery, some reported that it contained all kinds of debris, hair, and foul smells. You can imagine the look of horror on Williams’s face when the older man next to her, in her words, “took a sip and his red mustache was floating on top of the water.” Though feeling a bit squeamish, Williams dutifully took her turn and renewed her baptismal covenants. “I have always been delicate in my stomach,” she later wrote. “That day was no exception. It rolled completely over.” 1