This article presents knowledge about adversity and the changing nature of families in early modern townships. It proposes that the shape of the family changed across Nantwich (Cheshire) townships with some neighborhoods presenting very high numbers of female heads of household. While stressing variations, it presents new evidence on the subject of close family relationships. It puts forward the view that the elevated numbers of women living together demonstrates commitment, resilience, and emotional investment in female-centered families. This finding challenges heteronormative definitions of intimate relationships and indicates the need for further research to achieve a better understanding of intimacy in early modern families. This study additionally examines subjects of charity, health, hardship, credit and debt, and the accompanying struggles that were played out in the social sphere. In an important observation concerning the ever-changing composition of the family, this investigation ascertains that the family configuration changed according to fluctuating socioeconomic circumstances. What is also offered here is a contribution to knowledge about the county of Cheshire from the Hearth Tax for which there are no available Hearth Tax studies. This study investigates wills, inventories, probate records, deeds, poor accounts, and parish records and provides an insight into hardship through a close study of all of the poor in one street in 1664. It finds that poor children worked hard and when apprenticed were also compulsorily separated from the family home and that child mortality was equally high among rich and poor people in early modern Nantwich townships.