] ....whiskers, I mean. Could you find it, to give a bit of context, please?

JA does not appear to have used the word whisker - however, I have found it used describing rats in a poem called The Sugar Cane by James Grainger which was published 1764, so JA would have understood it, although I would put my money on the most common word used to describe mae facial hair on the chin as "beard", as in "Blue Beard" (translated into the English in the early 1700s)