My 3rd great grandfather Johan Drill was a soldier in Finland, with a birth date of 22 July 1778.
However, his birth name was not Johan Drill, and I've been stumped for quite a while anytime I tried to discover his real name. I better add that soldiers in Finland were assigned new names, and the only reference I was able to find for him for a long time was as Johan Drill.
Last night looking at Finnish church records I discovered that he moved to Ylikiiminki, Finland from Oulu in 1809.
Once I knew where he was from, and already knowing his wife's name and date of their marriage, I searched Oulu, Finland marriages for her, and discovered that when they were married he was still using what I assume was his birth name of Johan Grönlund.
That had been one of those searches that just wasn't going anywhere for a long time. Some times I'd ignore him for a week or more and concentrate on more productive searches on other family members, but I kept going back to him, and finally it paid off!
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