Eloise McLaughlin hasn’t found just the right cup yet.

Her husband, Fred “Buster” McLaughlin, died last June, but she still hasn’t placed a teacup and saucer in his memory in one of the cabinets at the Alton United Methodist Church.

“It’s hard to find one with a deer jumping through the woods on it,” she said, only half joking, earlier this week.

When McLaughlin finally finds the right cup, it will join the more than 100 others kept in four handmade cabinets on the back wall of the church fellowship hall. Numbered and displayed with the name of the person for whom it was donated, each cup honors a church member, a relative of a church member or a resident of Alton, a town of 800 just north of Bangor.

Most of the year, the teacups and their saucers stay in the cabinets. A few times a year, however, they are carefully removed and used for special events such as the annual Mother-Daughter tea or programs with other churches.

The idea for the teacup memorial took root in a more formal era, when United Methodist women sponsored church teas to raise money and for fellowship. The only problem was that most rural churches in Maine did not have china, so the women would bring in their own, then take it home after each event.

Nearly 30 years ago, McLaughlin and Joanne Philbrook represented the Alton churchwomen at a meeting at the Houlton United Methodist Church. That congregation has had a teacup collection since the late 1950s, said Julia Craigs, who has been a member of the Houlton congregation since 1943.

“About 1959, one of our gentlemen built us a cupboard with glass doors on it to house them,” Craigs said. “All the ladies were asked to bring one cup and saucer and donate it to the church. We still use them for special occasions.”

The Houlton church has more than 125 cups in its collection, but they were not given in memory of others and there is no card file of who donated which cup, as there is in Alton.

Philbrick died in 1995 as the result of a car accident. She taught Sunday school at the Alton church for years, served as treasurer, and spearheaded the building campaign that allowed the congregation to build a fellowship hall and install indoor plumbing.

The addition, completed about six years ago, was one of the ways the congregation honored Philbrick’s memory.

Continuing the teacup collection was another.

“It grounds them in their history, especially in the wake of losing Joanne,” said the Rev. Maria Guereca, pastor of the congregation.

Since Guereca began serving the church six years ago while still a student at Bangor Theological Seminary, the collection has grown by a third.

Occasionally, a cup is given away. Earlier this year, the congregation gave Bishop Peter Weaver, head of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, a teacup and saucer when he visited.

“I was very grateful for this unusual and beautiful expression of hospitality and caring,” Weaver said this week.

“It is an elegant reminder of a wonderful congregation that is creatively engaged in sharing God’s love with its community and world. While I have received other ‘mugs’ from churches, this is the first fine teacup I have been given as I have now visited over 200 of our United Methodist congregations in New England,” he said.

McLaughlin couldn’t recall when she gave the first cup to the church, but she gave it to honor her sister, Jenny Madden, who has lived and worked as a missionary for more than 40 years in South Africa.

“People coming to our public dinners saw the cups and started saying that they had someone special they wanted to donate a cup in honor of,” she said. “People like to be associated with the church even if they aren’t members in a small community like this. I just think they want to be a part of it.”

Most people, like McLaughlin, look for a cup that in some way represents the person they wish to honor. Others find what they need in their own china cabinets.

Nancie Burns, who has attended the church all her life, honored her mother by donating one of the cups from a tea set her mother received when she became grand matron of the Eastern Star.

Susan Barnes honored three family members with three identical cups and saucers that were part of a four-cup set she got with Green Stamps decades ago. Barnes said that she broke the fourth cup years ago.

Six years ago, Georgia Sharpe was baptized at the church and has been attending ever since. She describes herself as a transplant from Argyle.

“I thought [the cup] was a wonderful idea,” she said. “It’s so much fun to put them out and use them.”

When her husband, Manley Sharpe, died five years ago at the age of 84, she looked for just the right cup to honor him, but to no avail. Finally, a Canadian friend who had a collection of English china sold some pieces.

The cup in her husband’s memory has a bright pink saucer that matches the outside of the teacup. It immediately stands out from the more sedate cups on the shelves around it.

“I picked it because he loved bright colors,” she said. “This was the brightest one I could find.”