Did you empty the Trash or did you delete the Trash folder itself? If you deleted it, was it in your IMAP account, POP account, or Local Folders?

I emptied the trash...and would assume it was in a local folder

I gather from your answers that you still have a Trash folder, but it is now empty. Right? If so, I'm afraid there is no "undelete" function.

If you have a webmail access to your email provider (such as mail.google.com), you could look there to see if your messages might still be in their trash. Sometimes they don't actually empty their trash for days or even weeks.

Good luck.

You're correct- the trash folder is there but empty. I already checked but I have nothing (that I needed!) stored in my webmail, unfortunately. Thanks for trying to help!