He was named after his grandfather Pieter Jeremias Blignaut, a burgher of Stellenbosch, who married 25 October 1801 with Maria Dorothea de Villiers.

In view of Basotho threats, President Brand ordered the reorganisation of the Orange Free State defence, and the formulation of clear regulations for the different Volunteer Corps, which were administered by the Landdrosts' offices.

Blignaut had a sociable and open personality, which made him popular with both the burghers of the Orange Free State and the civil servants, who showed their high regard at his 30-year jubilee, in 1892.

[3] When war broke out in October 1899, and British troops stood to conquer Bloemfontein in March 1900, Blignaut organised the removal of the government to Kroonstad, including the state archives.

In January 1901, gravely ill, he was issued with a laissez-passer to travel to his farm Secretarispan near Bloemfontein, where he stayed for the remainder of the war, effectively on leave from his position as Government Secretary.

She set up a Ladies' Committee, initially to supply Boer prisoners of war with clothes, and later also to look after the welfare of the women and children in the British concentration camps.

Where his counterpart in the South African Republic, State Secretary Reitz, signed the treaty, but on principle did not want to take the oath of allegiance to the British government, Blignaut did so without qualms within a week, on 6 June 1902.

Perhaps his months of illness and contact with the British authorities during the last phase of the war influenced Blignaut's thinking about the future of the Orange Free State and his own position therein.

Privately, Blignaut pointed the administration of the Orange River Colony at the poverty and destitution of many white Free Staters, arranging for employment opportunities to be created for them.