Thunderbird default sorting

Open settings
Type config editor in search box and open it
In config editor's search box type mailnews.default
Change the settingts that ends with _sort_type and _sort_order

Variants for sort order

1 = Ascending
2 = Descending

Variants for sort type

17 = None
18 = Date
19 = Subject
20 = Author
21 = ID (Order Received)
22 = Thread
23 = Priority
24 = Status
25 = Size
26 = Flagged
27 = Unread
28 = Recipient
29 = Location
30 = Label
31 = Junk Status
32 = Attachments
33 = Account
34 = Custom
35 = Received

https://superuser.com/questions/13518/change-the-default-sorting-order-in-thunderbird/13551#13551