I have no doubt you lost then when you removed the account. I bet they were displayed when you clicked on the folder you deleted, or one of it's children, that is the usual story for folk on this forum that deleted their mail in Thunderbird and then realized what they had done. Next time you might just edit the account setting to correct your spelling. Neater and does not have an after effects. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_deleted_mail_accounts That will work as long as you did not check the box to delete the mail when you removed the account.