[Dovecot] Dovecot 1.x POP3 to Dovecot 2.x POP3 mbox to Maildir best transfer program/method

[Tim E.]

I have a  box running Dovecot 1.x POP3 only server using mbox format. I want to port the mail over to a Centos 6.3 box running a Dovecot 2.x POP3 only server using Maildir format. The main thing I want to do is support 
XUID/read/unread status so the transfer is transparent for the end user. I have been able to achieve transfers from the mbox format to Maildir 
but loose the XUID/read/unread status so that the Thunderbird client always re-downloads all the mail as if it were new. Ive googled and I have tried the following:

dsync : dovecot 1.x server is too old and doesnt support the command?
mb2md.pl: transfers the mbox to maildir and creates file dovecot-uidlist but the Thunderbird client redownloads the files
virtualmin copy-mailbox: transfers the mailbox to Maildir but doesnt reproduce the dovecot indexes.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I would like to produce a howto of the process when I am done.