2. Since I opened the electrum wallet I have not conducted any transactions other than purchase coin. I don't know where these addresses came from. They appear when I click the "addresses" tab on the wallet. Honestly, it's been so long since I was in this wallet I don't remember if I ever saw a balance of more than "0". I think, early on, a balance did show but I'm not absolutely sure. I found it easier to check the blockchain site. All the addresses begin with bc1q.
It sounds like you've been sending money to someone else's address for the last 2 years. You've been using a legacy address (starting with 1).
I just looked at my account history on the site where I bought all my coin.
Which site is this?
1N8vh3M4Kbj4aF5nBSnP44vLRzdbAxBprx
this is the address I copy and pasted onto the vendor's site.
Where did you get this address?
Is the above given address supposed to show up in the list of addresses shown under the "addresses" tab in the wallet?
If the address is part of your wallet, then yes, it should show up in the Addresses list.
Was my wallet corrupt right from the start? Since the blockchain shows the coin residing in the above address and they never came to the wallet does that mean they are, essentially, unrecoverable?
"The blockchain" doesn't know who owns the address. If you somehow copied someone else's address, someone else may be able to recover the funds. But since nothing was spent in the past 2 years, we can't know for sure.
It looks like I am locked out from ever accessing the bitcoin I bought with this wallet address.
Try to remember what exactly you did to get that wallet. Clearly, it didn't come from your Electrum wallet with bc1q-addresses.