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Found in the parish minutes of a small, rural German Lutheran church in Nebraska (from 1878): “Die anschaffung der Kohlen für die Confirmante sollte von der ganzen Gemeinde geschehen und hat jedes Gemeindeglied 25 Zent dazu zu bezahlen.”

I'm puzzled by the word "Confirmante" here! It looks suspiciously like "Konfirmanden," but why would a group of confirmands have any particular need for coal???? I'm assuming this is some alternate, obsolete word for some sort of furnace, but I haven't been able to verify anything like that.

In a preceding entry, a parish member had offered to build a "Befriedigung" around the church and cemetery. That was another puzzler until I found Befriedigung = fence or enclosure, in Adler's 1863 Dictionary of the German and English languages.

Any idea what "Confirmante" could possibly mean here? It appears at the very end of a line of text on the right edge of a worn page, so it may have once include an extra "n" on the end.