When thinking of prospective places to complete an internship, a cemetery is not exactly what comes to mind — unless you’re history student Dana Dawson, that is. Dana enjoys the hands-on learning and, well, the quiet that comes with working at Oak Hill Cemetery.

In 1871, the city of Birmingham purchased 21.5 acres north of downtown for what would become Oak Hill Cemetery. A member of the National Register of Historic Places since 1977, it holds Confederate and Union soldiers along with hundreds of victims of Birmingham’s 1873 cholera outbreak. Louise Wooster, infamous madame and hero of the cholera outbreak, is also entombed there. Even though the cemetery holds a variety of prominent figures, anyone can be buried in it.

While some would be unnerved working around the dead, Dana finds it relaxing. “It’s very quiet, away from the hustle and bustle of traffic,” she says. She can do her work while listening to music and enjoying the scenery, as the hill from which Oak Hill takes its name overlooks a beautiful view of the city.

The cemetery is divided into blocks that include many different graves. Her responsibilities as an intern include surveying the grounds to check conditions of each grave and see if it needs repairs. Dana is given a map of the block she is working each day. She starts out by drawing a rough sketch of a grave, making note of any discrepancies. “I will photograph the whole [grave] and each individual marker, making note of the photograph number for each one so that the photograph corresponds with my notes for that marker,” Dawson says.

“If I ever need clarity on this, I can just go back to the office and check the records for each block, locating the plot number and matching the names with the ones I was unsure about,” Dana says.

Dana plans to work with artifact collections in museums someday, and she feels her time at Oak Hill has taught her how to assess landscapes as well as inspired her to become more involved with archaeology.

Getting such an intimate experience with the dead has really interested her, especially being a history major. The grave markers give so much information in so few words; one can see if they fought in a war, which family members were left to remember them, and any other inscriptions.

“I get to learn small intimate things about their lives,” she says. “Some of these things are sad to think about, of course, but someone's thinking about them long after they've gone — in a sense, honoring their memory.”