Who founded the company that became Berkshire Hathaway's earliest predecessor?

Who founded the company that became Berkshire Hathaway’s earliest predecessor? Oliver Chace founded the Valley Falls Company, Berkshire Hathaway’s earliest predecessor.

Chace was a New England businessman who helped establish several textile enterprises in the early 19th century. He worked for Samuel Slater before starting his own textile mill in Swansea, Massachusetts, in 1806. He later helped create the Troy Cotton & Woolen Manufactory and the Pocasset Manufacturing Company.

In 1839, Chace acquired and reorganized the Valley Falls Company in Rhode Island. That business is identified as the original antecedent in Berkshire Hathaway’s long corporate lineage. The company’s history later passed through a series of textile mergers, including the formation of Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates in 1929.

Berkshire Hathaway itself dates to the 1955 merger of Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates and Hathaway Manufacturing Company. Thus, Horatio Hathaway was important to one predecessor, but Oliver Chace is the canonical answer when the question asks for the earliest predecessor’s founder.