By Peter F. Stevens

Many people have heard the name - Benjamin Stone, Jr. It is affixed to Dorchester's old G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) post near Fields Corner. So, too, is his name emblazoned on the town's Soldiers' Monument, on Meetinghouse Hill. And, every Memorial Day, veterans gather at the Stone statue at the Civil War plot in beautiful Cedar Grove Cemetery, where dozens of the old town's fallen are buried.

In 1861 Benjamin Stone, Jr., led Company K, of the 11th Massachusetts Regiment in the Army of the Potomac, into battle against "Johnny Reb." This Veterans Day, it is fitting to recall the immense sacrifices of Captain Stone and the men of Company K, for while men from Dorchester helped fill the muster rolls of several Massachusetts regiments, only Company K's roster completely hailed from "within the town limits."

Dorchester took a backseat to no Massachusetts town or city when Union Army recruiters set up enlistment booths. As historian William D. Orcutt notes, "with a population of ten thousand, she [Dorchester] enrolled thirteen hundred and forty-two soldiers, which was one hundred and twenty-three in excess of all calls."

The volunteers of Company K came from all walks of life and from every corner of Dorchester. In the spring of 1861, shortly after Rebel cannons blasted away at the stone walls of Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina, many men of Dorchester filed to the Lyceum Hall, on Meetinghouse Hill, where they were given "a surgical inspection by Dr. Benjamin Cushing," who also kept "an autograph list" recording the name, age, and profession or occupation of each volunteer.

Orcutt writes: "Company K was notable because of the character of those who enlisted in it. They were neither mercenaries nor holiday soldiers, but respectable young men who left their daily business from patriotic motives.

Every man in the company had a calling in life, some twenty-six trades being represented on its list."

Fired with patriotism, willing to risk all for the preservation of the Union, Company K's first enlistees banded together under state law that allowed them to choose their own officers. To serve as company captain, they elected Benjamin Stone, Jr., a 43-year-old "music-engraver." The men chose four lieutenants: 31-year-old William V. Monroe, a miner; George W.

Lucas, a 25-year-old cabinet-maker; accountant John T. Swett, 27; and Nathaniel Clark, a baker who, at 22, was the company's youngest officer.

Voted to the critical post of sergeant was John Munn, a 26-year-old house-joiner. The oldest member of Company K was 71-year-old cabinet-maker Samuel Thompson, who served as the unit's drummer.

In late May 1861, Company K filed into Lyceum Hall, where they drilled in front of a throng of townspeople. Reverend Nathaniel Hall then offered an invocation and prayer for the recruits, and, shortly afterward, the company, Captain Stone at its head, formed ranks and, flanked by their cheering neighbors, marched to Long Wharf, where a boat stood ready to ferry them to Fort Warren.

The scene was typical of a Massachusetts contingent leaving first for camp, then the front. In Civil War Boston, Thomas O'Connor writes: "When a company was organized, it was customary for the young women in the town or city" to send the men off…"Some drilling and training were followed by regimental parades and reviews for issuing orders, appointments, and promotions, and next usually came a collation and romantic promenade. When all the preliminaries were completed and the local unit was ready to go to the front, the company would parade down the town's main street, escorted by a band and a collection of local dignitaries, and be given a gala sendoff at the railroad depot."

For several weeks, the Dorchester company drilled hard at Camp Warren, learning the manual-of-arms, the all-important maneuvers from forming skirmish lines to regimental-scale battlefield formations, and handling standard-issue muskets.

By early summer, Stone and his men had arrived in "the seat of war," Virginia. They received their full-fledged baptism of fire at the First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, learning the hard and bloody way that there would be no quick victory over the Confederates and generals such as Thomas Jackson, who earned his sobriquet "Stonewall" Jackson at Bull Run.

Company K fought valiantly in the nightmarish clashes of the Army of the Potomac's ill-fated Peninsula Campaign. At the Second Battle of Bull Run, Captain Stone fell in the maelstrom of Rebel fire. Company K, without its first captain, slogged on, fighting with grit and courage at Fredericksburg. Then, at Gettysburg, in July 1863, Company K, which began the three-day battle "thirty strong," lost nineteen killed or wounded.

Replenished with additional Dorchester recruits, the company, now led by Captain William V. Monroe, fought its final campaign in the Wilderness, serving under Ulysses S. Grant. On June 13, 1864, the company's three-year hitch expiring, the men were discharged. Captain Monroe led the survivors back home to Dorchester, where the people readied a ceremony for their returning heroes.

Out of the original number that had enlisted in May 1861 in Company K, only twelve came back. Their regiment, the 11th, had suffered grievously, leading one local to note: "You see the line of march of the Eleventh by the line of grave-boards."

Captain Monroe and his surviving command reached Dorchester in the third week of June 1864, and a large crowd replete with a band met them with hurrahs and tears and escorted them to a home-coming reception at Meetinghouse Hill, where Reverend Hall, who had sent the men of Company K off with a prayer three years earlier, now offered a prayer of thanks "for their safe return."

Another cleric, Reverend James H. Means, read an address of welcome, followed by an emotional scene at Lyceum Hall, where soldiers and families reunited. Orcutt recalls: "The school children were out by the roadside as the company and escort came to the hill."

With particular poignancy, many remembered the unit's first commander, Captain Stone, and the battle in which he had fallen, the second clash at Bull Run.

When news of the action had reached Dorchester on Sunday, August 31, 1862, the town's churches all canceled afternoon services to make bandages and collect provisions for the Union wounded. Only later did the town learn the grim news of the valorous Stone's death on that same bloody patch of Virginia soil.

Within two years of the Civil War's end, in April 1865, leading citizens of Dorchester formed "to solicit subscriptions, to select a design for a soldiers' monument on Meetinghouse Hill, and to take the general charge of its erection." The memorial shaft was completed by the late summer of 1867, the marker's site in front of the old meeting-house.

Virtually the entire town gathered on September 17, 1867, for the dedication of the monument, which bore ninety-seven names, the Dorchester men "who laid down their lives" in "the War of the Southern Rebellion."

Local luminary Francis P. Denny delivered a solemn and moving address eulogizing the men of Company K and Dorchester comrades who had perished in other units:

"We have assembled on Meetinghouse Hill…for the soldiers. What memories are awakened as we gather here today! It was here you came to urge your young men to enlist in the army of the Union, at those earnest meetings where the word of patriotism was answered by the pledge of life for the country, and whose enlistment papers contained many a name inscribed upon the roll of honor here.

"At the time of defeat, in the hour of darkness, you stood here close together to strengthen your own faith, and to send the word of encouragement to you soldiers in the field. In the hour of dread suspense, on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, in yonder church, there was a meeting for the wounded and the dying soldiers, where not a word was spoken, but the tender love of women taught the lesson of the day. Here, week after week, year in and year out, in sunshine and in storm, have the mothers and sisters, the wives and daughters of our soldiers brought their offerings and prepared those comforts that can come only from home. How often have these rocks resounded with the measured tread of the procession bearing the precious dust of the hero from receiving its last sad honors to the final resting place! And when victory came, as come it must, it was here you welcomed home your war-worn veterans."

War-worn veteran Benjamin Stone, Jr., never came home, but his name graces both the monument, the old G.A.R. post in Fields Corner and the Civil War plot at Cedar Grove Cemetery. On Veterans Day, as Dorchester remembers its fathers, sons, and brothers who served their nation in every war America has fought, Captain Stone and the men he led in Company K should not be forgotten.

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author of The Rogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-48, Brassey's, and Notorious and Notable New Englanders, Down East Books.)