where did the office of deacon come from in the craft and what are his duties

Early eighteenth-century Masonic rituals contain no mention of deacons 1. In early English practice, their duties were divided between the Junior Warden and the Senior and Junior Entered Apprentices 1. The office was preserved and spread through Irish practice and the Antients Grand Lodge, until the United Grand Lodge of England officially adopted it at the Union of 1813 1.

Historical accounts distinguish between the deacon of early Scottish lodge minutes—who occupied a presiding position above the wardens—and the deacon of Irish ritual, whose role was modelled on ecclesiastical precedent 1. In primitive church tradition, deacons served as doorkeepers, a role that influenced their early function in the lodge 1.

In lodge organization, the Senior Deacon takes charge of the inner door, while the Junior Deacon manages the outer door 1. Both officers are attached to the Master and Wardens 2 and are charged with guiding candidates during ceremonies, as the United Grand Lodge of England notes. Their jewel and emblem is the dove bearing an olive branch, which represents peace, goodwill, and guidance 2, as the United Grand Lodge of England records.

Deacons were not present or recognised in English ritual or lodge practice during the early eighteenth century, when the Premier Grand Lodge was formed 1. The functions later assigned to deacons were divided between the Junior Warden and the Senior and Junior Entered Apprentices 1, while officers termed stewards carried out similar duties in early English lodges, as a paper read before Quatuor Coronati Lodge records.

The office did exist in certain operative lodges outside the immediate practice of the early Grand Lodge. In early Scottish lodges, a deacon occupied a presiding position above the wardens 1. Similarly, in English operative lodges such as Swalwell Lodge, the office was present in early local practice; however, upon taking a warrant under the Grand Lodge of England, the office was put in abeyance and was not revived under that jurisdiction for decades, according to research presented before Quatuor Coronati Lodge.

The deacon was preserved and spread through Irish practice and the Antients Grand Lodge, but the Premier Grand Lodge did not formally acknowledge or adopt the office until the Union of 1813 1.

Scottish operative lodges and associated trade incorporations possessed the office of deacon centuries before English lodges introduced it, though in a fundamentally different capacity. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland, the deacon was not a subordinate floor officer as in modern ritual, but a presiding executive authority.

The Lodge of Edinburgh recorded a deacon acting as president as early as 1599 3, and the Deacon of the Incorporation of Masons usurped the directorate of the lodge throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries 4. Kilwinning Lodge similarly appointed a deacon to its leadership structure, as recorded in minutes dating from 1643 4.

By contrast, the office of deacon in its modern floor-officer role was not adopted into the Lodge of Edinburgh until 1809 3.

The supplied historical records do not explicitly document the internal debate or motives behind the Premier Grand Lodge's omission of deacons. What the sources do establish is that the early English rituals simply made no provision for the office, distributing the functions later performed by deacons between the Junior Warden and the Entered Apprentices 1.

Because the office was a defining feature of Irish ritual and was subsequently adopted by the Antients Grand Lodge, maintaining a ritual structure without deacons served as a practical boundary between English Moderns practice and that of the Antients 1. The Moderns retained their established eighteenth-century usage until the Union of 1813, when the United Grand Lodge of England formally incorporated the office in deference to the Antients' practice 1.

The websites I drew on here are not among those a Masonic researcher would ordinarily rely upon. Please weigh what they say accordingly.