In the few years he spent tracking down his Walser ancestors, Howard had found traces of actual members of the Walser lines. Martha Walser, mentioned as "Martha Walzer" in "The Wandering Years", was born October 22, 1813, in Wilkes County, Georgia, and died February 09, 1862, in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. The great-grand uncle George Walser was a brother of Martha. He was born George Washington Walser, on February 08, 1818, Wilkes County, Georgia and he died on June 23, 1902, Montague County, Texas, the County where Howard has him losing an arm. As the dates and places clearly show, these people could only be related to the Samuel Walser Howard believed to be his ancestor.
 

    But where did Howard get the ideas that Samuel Walser was a "red-bearded giant", an ancestor of his, and just off from Denmark ?

    Samuel Walser did exist, but he was not a direct ancestor of Howard. He was in fact a son of Georges Washington Walser, who was indeed Howard's great-grand uncle. I have been unable to determine if the picture I obtained of the man was ever circulated in the Walser family or appeared in print somewhere, but given the physical aspect of the man, it would be tempting indeed to see in this man the source of Howard's idea of his giant red-bearded of an ancestor.
 

    As to Howard's making of a Samuel his ancestor, the probable source for the confusion probably resides in a book Howard encountered while performing his genealogical researches, probably between late 1933 and late 1934. That he mentioned "Samuel Waltser" as early as 1930, and then spelled it "Walzer", suggests an oral tradition much more than a written source. Logic here points in the direction of Howard's father, Isaac Mordecai Howard, who would have of course remembered a few details from his own youth. As most persons familiar with Robert E. Howard know, Isaac was a physician; what is of course less widely known is that in choosing this profession, Isaac was walking in the footsteps of his uncle, J.T. Henry, and perhaps studied under the man.
    In 1889, J.T. Henry was devoted a few lines in The Goodspeed's History of Arkansas. (The Goodspeeds were a series of books containing various biographical sketches on the citizens of the countries they were concerned with.)

    To better understand the importance of the passage in question, here follow again some lines of Howard's January 1935 letter to Lovecraft:
 

    I don’t know just what year my people moved into the state of Alabama, but it was long ago. My great-grandfather, Squire James Henry, was born in South Carolina in 1811, and he was a small boy when they went into Alabama, so you see it was pretty far back, anyway. The Henrys and a family named Walser from Georgia settled in what is now the counties of Bibb and Tuscaloosa, near the Black Warrior river. James Henry married a Walser woman and most of their children were born in Alabama. In 1847 they moved to Choctaw County, Mississippi, and settled near the upper reaches of the Big Black River…. Both the Henrys and the Walsers made the move. The Walsers remained in Mississippi until a year or so after the Civil War, and then moved to Texas and settled on what was then the western frontier. But the Henrys moved to southwestern Arkansas in 1856.

Dr. J. T. Henry is one of the very foremost of the professional men of the county, and is acknowledged by all to be an especially skillful physician and surgeon. He was born in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama in 1847, being a son of James and Mary Ann (Walser) Henry, who were born in South Carolina in 1881 [sic, 1811] and Georgia in 1816, respectively. They were married in Alabama, and from there moved to Mississippi in 1847, and reached Ouachita County, Arkansas in 1858, and here resided until his death in 1884. His widow survives him, and both were members of the Methodist Church for many years. He was engaged in farming until the latter part of his life, then engaged in merchandising at Holly Springs. He was in the Confederate army from June, 1861, to January, 1862, then returned home on account of ill health. His father, James Henry, was of Irish descent, a farmer by occupation, and died in Bibb County, Alabama. The paternal grandfather was Samuel Walser, a German, who died in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Dr. J. T. Henry was the sixth of ten children, eight of whom are now living and was reared to farm life, receiving a good common school education in his youth, principally at Holly Springs. In 1868 he began the study of medicine with Dr. W. H. Falen, of that place, and then entered the Medical Department of the University of Kentucky, at Louisville, but after attending this institution one year he became a student of the Medical University of Nashville, from which he was graduated in 1873. He at cone located near Bearden, where he has built up an extensive practice, but since 1889 he has been a merchant of the town, although that business has received his attention for the past ten years. He is a Democrat, a member of the A. F. & A.M., and was master of his lodge two years, but is now senior warden. In 1874 he married Miss Sidney A., a daughter of Garrett and Anna O. Gatlin, who removed from Georgia to Ouachita County at an early
day, but afterward settled in Union County, where the father died in 1876, having been a farmer throughout life, his wife being a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mrs. Henry was born in Ouachita County, and she and Mr. Henry have become the parents of eight children, one son and five daughters now living.
(See www.rootsweb.com/~arouachi/gdspd4.htm)

    In fact, one thing remains unaccounted for: Howard's unflinching conviction that "Samuel Walser" was  a "Viking" just off Skaggerack. As shown in the genealogical pages, the Walser line very probably originates from Switzerland, with Casper Walser sailing from Amsterdam in 1749. Howard was of course ignorant of the fact, but it also evident that he had accepted most, if not all, the information from Goodspeed, with the singular exception of the "German" origin of the so-called "Samuel Walser".
 

    Howard's dreams of icy wastes and desolate landscapes were probably all too real. The construction of a Danish - Viking - ancestor, coupled with the idea that atavistic traits of that particular ancestor were present in him helped him rationalize the contents of his dreams and of his otherwise unexplainable fascination with icy landscapes. All this evidently of course found its way in his fiction, notably in the James Allison stories, and probably explains some character traits of the young Conan. In the early phase of the Conan stories, the Cimmerian (that is to say pseudo-Gaelic) swore by the Norse god Ymir and not by Crom, and his fist venture out of Cimmeria was in the land of the Vanirs and Æsirs. As Howard wrote to P. Schuyler-Miller in March 1936: "[Conan's] grandfather was a member of a southern tribe who had fled from his own people because of a blood-feud and after long wanderings, eventually taken refuge with the people of the north. He had taken part in many raids into the Hyborian nations in his youth, before his flight, and perhaps it was the tales he told of those softer countries which roused in Conan, as a child, a desire to see them."
    When he had created Conan, Howard had established a linkage between the Cimbri and the Celts. To Lovecraft, he explained: "Most authorities consider the Cimbri were Germans, of course, and they probably were, but there's a possibility that they were Celtic, or of mixed Celtic and German blood, and it gratifies my fancy to portray them as Celts, anyway". The Texan was not one to let truth stand between him and a good story.
    Howard probably discovered at some time that the Walsers came not from Denmark, but from Switzerland. Surely it gratified his fancy to keep on portraying his ancestor as a red-bearded Viking from Denmark...