Van de Velde was born April 3, 1795 in Lebbeke, near Dendermonde, then in the Austrian Netherlands and now in Belgium. He was soon given to a "pious aunty" to raise in Sint-Amands, in Flanders. A priest, fleeing the French Revolution, was staying with the same family and encouraged the boy to be devout. At the age of ten, Van de Velde was sent to a boarding school in Ghent. He did so well that by the age of eighteen he was teaching French and Flemish.