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The earliest message I have accessible in Thunderbird is from the 25th of May, 2001. It's part of a conversation with old work colleagues who I had remained drinking buddies with when I started a new job nearby. (There are actually two messages with earlier dates, but one is an imported message from March of 2001 that wasn't actually sent or originally received by me, and another that's an old Usenet post, probably also imported, that doesn't have a datestamp at all, registering as 1/1/1970.)
If I go digging around in my university backup, I have messages from 1998 in there. I would have earlier e-mails, but quota was limited on the University systems, so I expect I deleted everything at the start of every year.