)In the 1877 Shamokin Uprising, railroad workers and miners angered by unexpected cuts in wages begun by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) joined what developed across the East with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which began with strikes in neighboring Martinsburg, West Virginia, then others in Maryland including the headquarters of the B&O at its Camden Street Station in downtown Baltimore then spread north and west into Pennsylvania and to Pittsburgh and other sites conducted in several major industrial cities in Pennsylvania, as well as more cities in the Northeast and as far west through to St. Louis and Missouri.Mayor William Douty commissioned a citizen manned local militia unit to help during the unrest.