If you had set to leave on server, then they're still there.

It deleted it from my server also. Was trying to figure out how to recover them from my local hard drive since they are not on the server.

Do you have a back-up copy of data on your local drive?

I am not sure if I have a backup copy or not. Not sure where to look for it.

I am not sure if I have a backup copy or not. Not sure where to look for it.

If you never explicitly set up your PC to be backed up, and you don't have someone else managing your PC who might have set up the back, then you don't have any.

Computers are great tools, but without backups you are at high risk of losing the data which it contains.

So, thunderbird doesn't have any places where it automatically stores emails if you deleted them from your trash?? I haven't back up my computer and don't have anyone else managing my PC for backups.

In that case, the messages are lost. Here are suggested steps to do that periodically, plus the steps for typical restore:

BACKUP

1. ensure thunderbird is not running
2. enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
3. this should open windows file explorer in Appdata\roaming folder
4. highlight the Thunderbird folder and copy to external media

RESTORE

1. ensure thunderbird is installed and NOT running
2. enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
3. you should be in Appdata\roaming folder , copy&paste the exported Thunderbird folder there. This may prompt to overwrite an existing folder of same name. allow it
4. start thunderbird and all should be there

ALso see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

So, thunderbird doesn't have any places where it automatically stores emails if you deleted them from your trash?? I haven't back up my computer and don't have anyone else managing my PC for backups.

Do you really want your computer to keep data that you told it to delete?

E-mail has a two-step deletion process that helps ensure that people do not "permanently" delete something that they want to keep: 1) move messages to the trash folder, 2) delete messages in the trash folder after a set period of time.

But if a person deletes the whole trash folder (is that possible?) or deletes all the messages in the trash folder (is that what you did?), then those messages are gone.

David and Wayne made good points about back-ups. I will add: you want to back up everything important on your computer's drive, not just Thunderbird data. I never back up just Thunderbird data because I back up my whole drive regularly.