I once thought I had a unique name. There are a few other Hiemstra's in Ontario, most are of no immediate relation to myself. My grandparents emigrated from Holland to settle here when my parents were still children, so the view I have of my family is fairly small and all local. But it seems that that the Hiemstra name is not as unique as I had once thought, and there are several other Michael's in this lineage that I have found on the Internet.

Here's a few that I've managed to log... I am not the Michael Hiemstra mentioned in these links:

• An accomplished young jazz musician (MI, USA)
• Computer programmer (WA, USA)
• Col. Michael Hiemstra, director of the Center for Army Lessons Learned (USA)
• Cabinet maker (near Ottawa, ON Canada)
• Retired CFO of Parker Hannifin(USA)
• Mike Hiemstra playing in the Ottawa Senior Mens Hockey League (ON, Canada)
• A medieval recreationist (also known as Mathe Brakkewinde) from the Realms of Avalon, an Idaho-local medieval education organization (USA)
• A dart player near Amsterdam (Netherlands)
• Employee at Laird Technologies
• A management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Kansas City

Here's a page I found that helps trace the Hiemstra name back to the Holkema family.

And for the benefit of Internet search engines crawling this page and people that can't type or don't know how to spell Friesian names, here are a few incorrect spellings (Heemstra, Hiemstruh, Heimstra, Hiemstr, Hempstra, Hamp, Hiemstre, Hemstra, Hamstra, yadda yadda yadda).

Other Hiemstra's of note on the 'Net:
Glen Hiemstra at Futurist.com