Now let us discuss those few, but very important, nationwide sources which do exist in other foreign countries: Census Census records are not unique to North America. In fact, some countries took limited censuses long before the 1790 U.S. census. The census records of Great Britain are of most value for immigrant researchers. Although census records exist in Continental Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, and other localities, they do not have state or nationwide indexes as do United States census records. This situation is slowly beginning to change as more foreign censuses are being indexed. Often these indexes are only at the county or regional level, so they are not true "nationwide" sources. However, even when only portions of a census are indexed, or the indexes are only for smaller jurisdictions, it is still relatively easy and fast to search the indexes to locate families of interest. British censuses are by far the most useful, but do note that most of the census records for Ireland were destroyed. Also, prior to 1841, the British censuses were primarily statistical in nature and do not list names, except for an occasional parish where names were listed. Many portions of the 1841 and later censuses have been indexed, but the only true nationwide index is for the 1881 census.