John Rooney was born 1880 in Oxford, WI.
Early on the morning of August 26, 1902, the three Sweet brothers were camped out near the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul tracks on Fargo's west side when they were attacked and robbed by three masked men. The eldest, Harold Sweet, fought back and was shot in the abdomen, but his brothers managed to subdue and capture the gunman. When Sweet died of his wounds the following day his assailant, identified as John Rooney, was charged with first degree murder.
Rooney was the first (and last) convict to die under a 1903 law which dictated that all future executions take place at the state penitentiary. His friendliness with local reporters resulted in considerable information being published on his life as a leader of a gang which preyed upon the harvest workers who migrated to North Dakota every fall.
During the period of rapid industrialization in the United States after 1865, the Great Dakota Boom occurred. During the 1880s, what is today North and South Dakota witnessed an immigration, manufacturing, and urbanization expansion that far eclipsed anything the nation had previously experienced. The Great Dakota Boom has been attributed to several events, but the most important are improvements in flour milling and the construction of railroads. New millin• processes made the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul the flour milling center of the United States, while railroads gave farmers in this fabulously rich, grain growing country their only market outlets, the flour mills of Minneapolis and the grain port of Duluth.
Source: (A Mis-Applied Response to Opportunity: The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway and The Great Dakota Boom 1879-1886 E Stewart Mitchell Modern Railroads and University of Illinois at Chicago Circle)
Here are some newspaper articles I found:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/82168483/john-rooney/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/82167778/john-rooney/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/82167507/john-rooney/
North Dakota has carried out only 8 executions in its history. And it's still a no death penalty state. There's talk of movie to be made about Rooney, I found this link.
I have ordered my copy
Here's another you maybe interested in
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-thirteenth-turn-a-history-of-the-noose-by-jack-shuler/2014/08/27/cfab51d4-0b68-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html
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