The Hathaway Manufacturing Company was founded in 1888 in New Bedford, Massachusetts by Horatio Hathaway as a cotton milling business. The company was successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a general decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, the company was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression.

In 1955, Hathaway merged with Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates, another textile company that was founded in Valley Falls, Rhode Island (and earlier called the Valley Falls Company) by members of the Chace family in the early nineteenth century. After the merger, Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford, Massachusetts. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, accompanied by large layoffs.

In 1962, Warren Buffett, convinced that Hathaway was trading at less than its real value, began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway. After some clashes with the Stanton family, he bought up enough shares to change the management and soon controlled the company.

Buffett initially maintained Hathaway's core business of textile milling, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry and other investments. Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO), which forms the core of its insurance operations today (and is a major source of capital for Hathaway's other investments). In 1985, the last textile operations (Hathaway's historic core) were shut down  Berkshire Hathaway is notable in that it has never split its shares, which not only contributed to their high per-share price but also significantly reduced the liquidity of the stock. On October 23, 2006 shares closed at $100,000 for the first time