Beeswax, tallow and whale oil? And that was just for lighting purposes. For power, we used horses and oxen, or wood-burning steam locomotives and riverboats.
What small quantities of seepage petroleum were used, was primarily as a form of patent medicine. It fulfilled the primary requirement of medicine in those days, by tasting like H*ll.
Kerosene became the salvation of the American frontier.
Correct. Just tell them that the discovery of oil saved the whales.