Vaughnsville's most unusual claim to fame is the first location in the World to use individual communion cups for the Lord's Supper. Though contested. John G. Thomas—a physician and pastor of the Vaughnsville Congregational Church—designed a communion outfit after noticing "a communicant with a diseased mouth condition". Thomas applied for a patent for his invention on August 2, 1893, in which he wrote that he "invented certain new and useful improvements in communion service" which would "provide an individual or separate cup for the use of each person at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, commonly called the communion service…" (Serial No. 482,186). According to "The Lima News", Thomas and his church elders first experimented with the individual cups "sometime during 1893" (January 16, 1955, p. 5B). The patent for his invention was granted on March 6, 1894, and marked the first time an individual cup service received letters patent in the United States (Patent No. 516,065). Thomas moved to Lima and started the Thomas Communion Service Company in 1893 and it was sold in 1972.