Pieter Willem van Heerden was born on 27 August 1859 and married Anna Cecilia Grobbelaar on 25 November 1885. Van Heerden farmed on Vaalvlei outside Tarkastad and he and Anna had 6 children, 4 of them sons.

In 1901, during the Anglo Boer War, a British platoon was involved in a skirmish with Boers who had earlier been at van Heerden’s farmhouse. It was claimed that shots had been fired at the British from the building, and a man was killed. Van Heerden, who was half-blind and overweight, was arrested. The trial at Graaff-Reinet only took place in October that year, a month after the defeat of the 17th Lancers in the Battle of Elands River outside Tarkastad, and there is a strong belief that he was made a scapegoat for it.

Van Heerden was convicted and sentenced to death as a Cape Rebel in a trial that appeared very tendentious. He was shot by a firing squad at Tarkastad on 12 November 1901. Unfortunately, the letter stating that the death sentence had been commuted arrived too late. The execution took place with the condemned standing close to the large rock near the Tarkastad Station. He was buried in the Tarkastad cemetery, and in 2013, the Heritage Foundation arranged to have a memorial plaque laid on the grave.