BETHEL – A new exhibit about the life and times of a legendary Abenaki from western Maine opened Saturday at the Bethel Historical Society.

Titled “Molly Ockett and Her World,” the history project details the medicine woman’s life from her birth in Fryeburg in about 1740 to her death in Andover on Aug. 2, 1816.

Society curator Randall H. Bennett said Friday that it took two years of research, which he and curatorial assistant Danna Brown Nickerson conducted, to separate fact from myth.

“She was a real person. We know she existed and we wanted to tell her story,” Bennett said.

They avoided 20th century accounts of Ockett’s life, instead delving back into history.

The exhibit focuses on “the most reliable information available” about Molly Ockett, “raising this native American woman from the realm of myth and legend to the status of a documented personality in the Colonial history of northern New England,” Bennett said.

He said she was “a unique person” who spoke French, English and Abenaki, and moved back and forth through various cultures over great distances. “Some people thought she was a witch, but she helped the early white settlers,” Bennett said.

Baptized “Marie Agathe,” Molly Ockett – into which the name was corrupted – was a member of the Pigwacket Abenaki tribe, an eastern Algonquian subgroup that occupied the Saco River Valley. Their main village was at Fryeburg, 40 miles south of Bethel.

The Abenaki homeland stretched from Iroquoian tribal lands in southern Quebec to the northern Massachusetts border and from Passamaquoddy territory in eastern Maine to the shore of Lake Champlain in western Vermont, Bennett added.

Molly Ockett entered a world when her people faced ongoing and violent frontier warfare.

“Her place in the region has been ensured by a native American mystique complete with romance, curses, buried treasure and near-miraculous cures,” Bennett said.

He said she was an itinerant healer and herbalist for the natives and newcomers to the western Maine region. Ockett established close relations with early settlers in Andover, Bethel, Fryeburg, Paris and Poland.

“Indians were so frowned upon then, but she was unusual because she had a great knowledge of medicine. She was also what some stories call a rememberer,’ because she told detailed stories that had been passed on from generation to generation,” Bennett said.

The exhibit also touches on her experiences in the French and Indian War, during the extermination of the Abenakis by the English, and the “Last Indian Raid in New England” in 1781 in the upper Androscoggin River valley.

Ockett’s healing of famous people and military men are also detailed.

“She must have been a very interesting woman. She’s one of the people I’d like to meet if I could go back in time,” Bennett added.

Funding for the project was provided by the Maine State Organization of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Molly Ockett Chapter of the DAR in Fryeburg, and Pat and Henry Stewart of Greenwood.

WHAT: “Molly Ockett and Her World,” a display of historical accounts, research and artifacts of the life of a legendary Abenaki Native American medicine woman and storyteller

WHERE: Bethel Historical Society, O’Neil Robinson House, 10 Broad St.

WHEN: From 10 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. year round on Tuesdays through Fridays; from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays in July, August and December; or by appointment. Call 824-2908 for more information or to schedule an appointment.