At one church, where my father preached, we had a board in the lobby with hooks. Each hook had a tag with the name of a person who attended there. You were to turn over your tag if you were present. Each service. For a time, they reversed that, adding a chart so you could see where your tag was. Also, anyone who was baptized had a red circle around his or her name, the color signifying you were "washed in the blood." Either way, someone noted who was and wasn't there.
At another church, a guy with a clipboard went around, looking to see who attended.
The church I went to in college would list the names of absentees in the following week's bulletin.
"We missed you" gradually became a flat-out "where were you?"