The account shown at the top of the 'Account Settings' window list and also the Folder Pane list is always the default mail account. Local Folders mail account is a special mail account created by Thunderbird by default and is independent of any server. Therefore it cannot be set as a default mail acount.

Toad-Hall, If you use "Manual Sort Folders" I can rearrange the accounts. What I want is for Local Folders to appear at the top of the accounts folder on in the left pane when I am viewing my email. This way I do not need to scroll down to Local Folder.

I solved the problem. By using Global Inbox it removes the other accounts from appearing on the email page in the left hand column. So the only thing that appears is my Local account.

As you mentioned Global (Local Folders) , I had assumed you had more than one pop account using 'Local Folders' as the global Inbox and organisation of folders. But, because you were mentioning other mail accounts appearing above it, I had also assumed you had other types of account eg: imap that cannot be set up to use Global (Local Folders).

But yes, if you only use pop and they are correctly set up to use Global (Local Folders) then you will only see the one account name in the Folder Pane.