Balterswil is a village and former municipality in the

canton of Thurgau Thurgau (; ; ; ), anglicized as Thurgovia, and formally as the Canton of Thurgau, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of five districts. Its capital is Frauenfeld. Thurgau is part of Eastern Switzerland. I ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. The municipality also contained the villages Lützelmurg, Zielwies, Ifwil and Lochwies.

History

Balterswil is first mentioned in 885 as ''Baldherreswilare''. Balterswil was owned in the

Late Middle Ages The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the Periodization, period of History of Europe, European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period ( ...

by the Lords of Bichelsee. In 1419 it was given by the Landenberger's to Fischingen Abbey. Until 1798 it was part of the old court of Fischinger. In 1521, certain farm land usage rights were extended to Ifwil, followed in 1651 by limited civil benefits to existing farmsteads. In 1884 an arsonist caused a large fire in the village. It was always part of the Bichelsee

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

. The major sources of income were vineyards, fields and orchards, and peat extraction until the 19th century, when the livestock industry moved into the village. By 1900, there were several small embroidery businesses, but local economy remained rooted in small businesses and agriculture until around 1970. Between 1941 and 1950 the ''Riet Soor'' marsh was drained which opened up additional land. In 1979 a freight storage and transshipping facility opened. The late-20th-century economy included a pneumatic equipment company (est. 1950), a storage facilities company (with a total of about 250 employees), and numerous residential buildings in the village. In 1996 the municipality was merged with the neighboring municipality Bichelsee to form a new and larger municipality Bichelsee-Balterswil.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz
published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office accessed 14 January 2010

Historic population

The historical population is given in the following table:

References

* Former municipalities of Thurgau Villages in Thurgau {{Thurgau-geo-stub