Magdalena Srocke (sometimes spelled Sokin or Locke) was Wendish, born in Germany and immigrating to central Texas as a young unmarried woman on the ship Ben Nevis. That 1854 Ben Nevis voyage brought the first Wendish colony to Texas, whose passengers founded Serbin, Lee County, Texas.

Magdalena's parents were Michael Srocke (10 Jan 1783 - 12 Feb 1838 Olsa B. Klitten, Prussia) and Anna Tschornack (7 Jun 1786 Durrbach, Prussia - 19 Jan 1855 Olsa B. Klitten, Prussia). Her father died when Magdalena was a child, and her mother will die back in Germany soon after Magdalena's departure for the New World.

Magdalena appears on the Ben Nevis ship roster as a family group of one person, traveling alone, occupation maid. However her first cousin George Soker and his wife and family were also on the Ben Nevis, household #28. One of Magdalena's nieces, her sister Dorothea's daughter Magdalena Schurck, will later also immigrate to Texas. [The niece marries Mattes Krause in the 1880s.]

Magdalena spends her first years in Texas at New Ulm, Austin County, Texas. She is listed as a witness/sponsor at a couple of baptisms at St Paul's Lutheran church in Serbin. Three years after they arrive in Texas, on 7 Jan 1857 in New Ulm, Austin County TX, she marries Christoph Jatzlau, another Wendish immigrant who had been on the Ben Nevis with her. Pastor John Killian of St Paul Lutheran Church performs the marriage, without marriage sermon, at the home of Matthew Matthiez, farmer at New Ulm, and further notes in German in the St Paul church records that the bride is age 27, the youngest surviving daughter of the late Michael Srocke, cottager at Olsa near Klitten.

Magdalena and her husband have four children: Charles Ernst, Maria/Mary (marries August Kalmbach), Charles/Carl Rudolph, and Johann August (dies age 3). On the 1860 census they are in Brenham, Washington County, TX, where they help found Eben Ezer Lutheran Church. Her husband is a reluctant Confederate during the Civil War. After the war, in 1869 their daughter Maria is baptized at Salem Lutheran Church, also near Brenham in Washington County.

In December 1869 Christoph and Magdalena sell their Brenham-area land and by 1870 are in Fayette County, Texas, owning tracts on Rabbs Creek and Boone's Creek. After Christoph's death Magdalena continues to farm the land, until her death when the land is transferred to their son-in-law August Kalmbach.

Magdalena is buried at Holy Cross Lutheran in Warda, Fayette County, in the newer church cemetery, not in the old Dunk cemetery section where her husband was buried.

Note: Magdalena, along with her future husband and mother-in-law who were traveling on the same ship, are the first of all ancestors in the LaVerne H. Hobratsch & Edwin A. Domel family tree to arrive in America (1854).