After the separation of the majority of the people of the Isle of Lewis from the Established Church of Scotland in 1843 they formed themselves into congregations of the Free Church of Scotland. One Free Church served the town of Stornoway and the surrounding villages, and consisted of about 4,000 adherents with a single Minister. For the next 30 years or so, this largely Gaelic-speaking congregation continued to worship as one, with the majority of services being conducted in Gaelic. . However, Stornoway itself was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan town, especially in the fishing season when hundreds of boats and their crews of 5,000 or more made Stornoway their headquarters. Very few of these new arrivals understood Gaelic and it was in response to the desire for religious services in English to meet their needs that a petition was presented to the Stornoway Kirk Session asking for an English Preaching Station to be opened in the town. The petition was supported by the Lewis Presbytery and was approved by the General Assembly of 1875.

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The Kirk Session of the new English Preaching Station met for the first time on 23rd June 1875 and that evening, at a meeting of members and adherents of the new congregation, a Committee was elected, to be succeeded four years later by a Deacon’s Court. The congregation met on Sundays in the Masonic Hall and worship was led by a succession of visiting ministers and students. At the first Communion Service on the last Sunday of August 1875 there were 35 members listed on the Roll.

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In 1876, after the General Assembly approved the change of status of the congregation from a Preaching Station to a Ministerial Charge, the Session met on 14th June as the Kirk Session of the Free English Church Congregation. The following Tuesday the congregation met to discuss the election of a Minister, subsequently choosing Donald John Martin, a qualified probationer, who by his lectures and fine glowing sermons in the period since the previous December, had won the enthusiastic affection of the worshipers. He was ordained and inducted on 11th September 1876.

Donald John Martin, a native of Arisaig who was brought up in Skye, was 29 years old at the time of his induction, and led the congregation for the next 20 years, in a very fruitful ministry in which he founded its traditions, and in due course gave the congregation its name. He was a fearless preacher with a special gift for prayer, the effect of which was demonstrated in the Great Revival of 1880, which developed from meetings held in the Church for East Coast fisherman and eventually swept through the whole town. He was a strong advocate of Temperance, spent £1,000 to buy a property in the town in order to close the ‘two dram shops’ it contained, and also opened a Temperance Restaurant with rooms for reading, writing and parlour games. He held special Services for the East coast Fisher Girls during their annual stays in Stornoway (commemorated in a statue on South Beach Quay), set up another Coffee House for these girls, and arranged regular visits to them by ladies of his congregation. He also encouraged young people of his congregation to come forward as members to take communion, in an era when this sacrament was generally regarded as the prerogative of older members of a congregation. At the 1880 Revival 60 new members, mostly young, were admitted to the congregation.