[Just mythoughts]

"(James Buchanan, an ancestor of my husband's even though he was a "Copperhead.")"

lol could you explain where and what about the "Copperhead"?

[Verginius Rufus]

President James Buchanan never married so I doubt that he is the direct ancestor of anyone alive today. He is the only President from Pennsylvania, a state where a lot of Scots-Irish settled in colonial times.

The Copperheads were Northerners who sympathized with the South during the Civil War...I assume they were called after the snakes (poisonous vipers like rattlesnakes but without rattles so they don't give warning).